In the Bronze Age often the body was burnt wholly or in parts. Sometimes the ashes were collected and placed in an urn. This burning of the body seems to have been one of their sacred rites of burial. In nearly every case where the body has been burnt, holes seem to have been bored or drilled into the ground underneath the body. Sometimes these were stake holes, but the wood has perished. In these barrows was buried the chief of the clan or tribe.
A plate picture of the different kinds of skulls of the Dolicho-cephalic and the Brachy-cephalic people appears in the British Museum Handbook to the Antiquities of the Bronze Age, page 20.
It is considered very probable that the round-headed people were the conquerors of the long-headed race.
Entrenchments of the Iron Age
It is to this age we must refer the making of the lines of entrenchments in various parts of the county at Honington, Ingoldsby, Kingerby, Hoe Hill, Fulletby, and other places.
The Bronze Age people are generally called Celts, and have been subdivided by Professor Rhys as Goidelic and Brythonic races—the older race being the Goidels and the later race Brythons.
“Both races spoke a language that belonged to the Aryan or Indo-European family, but had certain peculiarities that point to racial divergence.”—C. H. Read.
It is to the Bronze Age Professor Boyd Dawkins would attribute the erection of the great stone circles, such as Stonehenge, Avebury, and other places, but of these stone circles no remnants exist in Lincolnshire.
The Prehistoric Iron Age, 400 B.C.
Traces of the occupation of Lincolnshire in this period are to be found in the pre-Roman smelting furnaces for iron in various parts of the county at Manton and elsewhere.