PLATE I. Figs. 1 3 2 4 6 5
Bronze Age Objects from Dorset Round Barrows
(IN THE DORSET COUNTY MUSEUM).
⅕ Scale.
PLATE II. Figs. 1 3 2 4
Bronze Age Objects from Dorset Round Barrows
(IN THE DORSET COUNTY MUSEUM).
⅕ Scale.
The late Lieut.-General Pitt-Rivers, in 1893, removed the whole of Wor Barrow, on Handley Down,[5] and made a very exhaustive examination of its contents, which presented many features of peculiar interest. This barrow, with ditch, was about 175 feet long, 125 feet wide, and 13½ feet high; inside the mound on the ground level was an oblong space, 93 ft. by 34 ft., surrounded by a trench filled with flints. The earth above the trench bore traces of wooden piles, which were, no doubt, originally stuck into the trench with the flints packed around to keep them in place, thus forming a palisade; the wooden piles in this case taking the place of the stone slabs found in the stone-chambered long barrows of Gloucestershire and elsewhere.
Six primary interments by inhumation were discovered at the south-east part of the enclosure, with a fragment of coarse British pottery. Three of the bodies were in a crouched position. The remaining three had been deposited as bones, not in sequence, the long bones being laid out by the side of the skulls; and careful measurement of these bones shows that their owners were the short people of the long-headed or Neolithic race, which confirms the first part of Dr. Thurnam’s axiom: “Long barrows long skulls, round barrows round skulls.” Nineteen secondary interments of a later date were found in the upper part of the barrow and in the surrounding ditch, with numerous pieces of pottery, flint implements, fragments of bronze and iron, and coins, proving that the barrow was used as a place of burial down to Roman times.
In Dorset the round barrows are generally found on the summits of the hills which run through the county, more particularly on the Ridgeway, which roughly follows the coast line from near Bridport to Swanage, where may be seen some hundreds of all sizes, from huge barrows over 100 feet in diameter and 15 feet in height to small mounds, so little raised above the surface that only the tell-tale shadows cast by the rising or setting sun show where a former inhabitant lies buried.
In the western part of the county they may be traced from Kingston Russell to Agger-Dun, through Sydling and Cerne Abbas to Bulbarrow, and in the east, from Swanage Bay to Bere Regis; and also near Dorchester, Wimborne, Blandford, and other places.
In the Bronze Age cremation and inhumation were both practised; but in Dorset burials by cremation are the more common. The cremated remains were sometimes placed in a hole or on the surface line, with nothing to protect them from the weight of the barrow above; at other times they were covered by flat slabs of stone, built in the form of a small closed chamber or cist. Often they were placed on a flat piece of stone, and covered with an inverted urn, or put in an urn, with a covering slab over them; and they have been found wrapped in an animal’s skin, or in a bag of some woven material, or even in a wooden coffin.
The inhumed bodies are nearly always found in a contracted posture, with the knees drawn up towards the chin; and a larger number face either east, south or west, than north. In the case of an inhumation, when the body was deposited below the old surface level, the grave was often neatly hewn and sometimes lined with slabs of stone, and it was the common custom to pile a heap of flints over it, affording a protection from wild animals; above the flints was heaped the main portion of the mound, which consisted of mould and chalk rubble.
A ditch, with or without a causeway,[6] usually surrounds each barrow, but is so often silted up that no trace of it can be seen on the surface; it probably helped to supply the chalk rubble of the barrow.