Professor Boyd Dawkins[2147] insists that cremation was introduced into Britain by ‘the bronze-using Celtic tribes’; and Dr. Munro[2148] apparently agrees with him. Putting aside the fact that most of the tribes to which the professor refers were not Celtic,[2149] there is no evidence that cremation was first introduced by bronze-using tribes: if it was, the long barrows in which primary cremation interments have been found must have been erected in the British Bronze Age! It may or may not be true that, as Canon Greenwell suggests,[2150] some of the Yorkshire round barrows were erected in the Stone Age; but at all events they were later than the long barrows of the same county. Those long barrows, according to Dr. Munro and Professor Boyd Dawkins, must have been erected after a bronze-using people had introduced cremation into Britain. How then would the professor and the doctor explain the fact that in the round barrows of the Yorkshire Wolds there was a reaction in favour of inhumation, seeing that Canon Greenwell[2151] found in them 301 interments of unburnt and only 78 of burnt bones?
Dr. Munro[2152] remarks further that, ‘so far as available evidence has been adduced, it would appear that the only sepulchral remains, proved to have been older than the custom of cremation, are the chambered cairns in the south-west of England. When, however, the analogous cairns of Argyllshire, Caithness, and the Orkney Islands were constructed, the religious wave had already enveloped Northern Britain. Hence, though generally destitute of bronze relics, these structures were generally contemporary with the Bronze Age burials elsewhere in Britain.... The explanation ... is that in out-of-the-way localities ... the Stone Age civilisation lingered longer than in those on the main routes of commercial intercourse.’ Certainly; but no sepulchral remains in Britain are ‘proved to have been older than the custom of cremation’. Inhumation preceded cremation in Cornwall;[2153] but there is no evidence that when inhumation was first practised there cremation was not practised in other parts of Britain. Though cremation was very rare in the chambered long barrows of Gloucestershire and Wiltshire, it was not unknown:[2154] it was almost universal in the unchambered long barrows of Yorkshire; and it cannot be proved that they were later than the chambered long barrows of Wiltshire and Gloucestershire.[2155] The chambered cairns of Scotland were not only ‘generally’ but absolutely ‘destitute of bronze relics’. Very likely some of them may have been erected after the Bronze Age had commenced in Southern Britain; but even this can hardly be proved. What has been proved is that even in the Palaeolithic Age in the caves near Mentone cremation was already practised side by side with inhumation.[2156]
[Since the rough draft of this note was written Professor Boyd Dawkins[2157] has asserted that the long chambered barrow of Stoney Littleton belonged to the Bronze Age, while he admits, apparently because it did not contain cremated interments, that the long chambered barrow of Rodmarton was neolithic.[2158]]
Professor Ridgeway’s views, which are expounded in his well-known chapter, ‘Cremation, Inhumation, and the Soul,’ have been noticed in the first part of this book. In regard to Western usage he blunders in a way which makes me hesitate to accept his statements about archaeological details that I have not myself studied. He says that ‘in Dorsetshire ... the extended position seems to be the prevalent one’,[2159] a remark which I have already noted[2160] as an instance of the danger of relying upon second-hand evidence; he implies that the invaders who ‘conquered Dorset, Wiltshire, and Cornwall’ in the Bronze Age were Belgae;[2161] and he states that ‘in France inhumation was universal before the age of metal’,[2162] which, as I have shown,[2163] is contrary to fact.
SEPULCHRAL POTTERY
Some antiquaries have maintained that drinking-cups, food-vessels, incense-cups, and urns were not specially made for sepulchral purposes, but were merely ordinary domestic vessels.[2164] On the other hand, it has been urged that most of them were too fragile to stand rough usage; that many are so contracted at the bottom that they would have been ill adapted to serve as table or culinary ware; that the food-vessels and the drinking-cups were too porous to hold fluid long, while the shape of most of them would have made them inconvenient for any ordinary purpose; and that all are wholly unlike the domestic pottery which has actually been found in hut-circles, forts, barrows, and the Heathery Burn Cave.[2165] Mr. J. R. Mortimer[2166] replies that drinking-cups and food-vessels were quite strong enough for domestic use; that ‘the form of the typical drinking-cup is well chosen for the purpose its name implies, and most of the food-vessels are the prototypes of our ... porringers, jars’, &c. It may be admitted that some few food-vessels, for instance the one figured by Thurnam in Archaeologia, xliii, 381, are, apart from their decoration, not unlike domestic bowls; but what about incense-cups? The truth perhaps lies between the opposing views; for drinking-cups and food-vessels have been exhumed from pit-dwellings near Taplow;[2167] and Pitt-Rivers,[2168] speaking of an urn which was found on the bottom of the ditch of the camp in South Lodge Park in his estate, observes that ‘it is more probable that the urn would be found in the ditch thrown away as refuse if it was in ordinary use, than if it were only fabricated for ceremonial purposes’. He remarks further that ‘the large quantities of pottery of the same quality ... afterwards found in different parts of the Camp, confirms this opinion [that sepulchral pottery was used for domestic purposes], as it could not all have been used for funeral urns’.[2169] Moreover, fragments of ornamental pottery of the drinking-cup type were found by Pitt-Rivers in a pit in Martin Down Camp.[2170] Still, the fact remains that only a very small proportion of the pottery which is commonly called sepulchral has been found outside sepulchres; and even it may have been intended for sepulchral use.
STONEHENGE
Stonehenge has exercised the minds of many generations of antiquaries. An exhaustive bibliography, filling 169 pages and containing the titles of 947 books and articles, was published in the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine for 1901: but nearly all the works therein enumerated are obsolete; and any one who wishes to form an independent judgement will find all the necessary materials in the volumes which will be referred to in this article.