BARROW. The origin of barrow-making is unknown. The earliest deliberate burials occurred in the Mousterian period, in caves; and although connecting links are not numerous, the natural cave must have been the ancestor of the megalithic pas sage-grave. In all essentials the cave and the passage-grave are the same ; the "points," so to speak, of a habitation cave are (I) the ground in front of the mouth, (2) the mouth, and (3 ) the dark, little used interior. Of these the mouth was the most important, and was often walled off ; and it is natural to suppose that the darker recesses were used for sleeping in at night. These three features correspond fairly well with the typical arrangement of a passage-grave; and if the houses of the dead were modelled upon those of the living, as is usually supposed, there may be some truth in this suggested evolution. Megalithic burial-places were very often covered with mounds of earth or, in stony coun try, cairns of stone ; they were in fact the first barrows, so they must be considered here.
The three classic examples of megalithic round barrows are Gavr Inis, Britanny ; New Grange, Ireland (fig. I) ; and Maes Howe in Orkney. The mound of Houge Bie in Jersey belongs to the same class. In essential plan these are all identical—a huge mound cov ering a long flagged passage, lead ing to a central, or nearly central cruciform chamber; the whole mound being sometimes sur rounded by a circle of stones or a ditch. There are no examples of this type in England, except possibly, in a degenerate form, in Cornwall and (more doubtfully) in Derbyshire.
Long barrows are of earth and stone. Those of earth probably had wooden chambers. At Worbarrow, excavated in 1893 by Gen. Pitt-Rivers, remains of wooden posts were found inside the bar row. The substitution of earth and wood was due to the absence of suitable stone for building chambers. Wherever such stone was present it was used. In some cases it was even transported several, miles. In the celebrated West Kennet long barrow near Avebury, the chambers are of sarsens or grey wethers, but the interstices between them were filled up by flat oolitic slates brought there from near Calne—that is the nearest outcrop, at any rate—seven miles away, and oolitic chips can be picked up on the surface of an unexcavated long barrow on Horton down, two miles to the south-west. In Wiltshire there are about a hundred altogether; elsewhere they are less abundant, but there are many in Hampshire and Dorset, a few in Cornwall, Somerset, Yorkshire, Kent and Sussex, and at least three in Lincolnshire.
Three types of chambered long barrows may be distinguished. At first the entrance was made in the east end, and through a portal consisting of two upright stones and a lintel. Through this one went along a narrow passage between uprights, and on either side of the passage were the burial chambers. The whole was cov ered in by a mound of earth and stones. To this type belong Way land's smithy in Berks (fig. 2), several of the Somerset long bar rows, and in Gloucestershire Hetty Pegler's Tump at Uley and the Nympsfield barrow close by. Later the burial chambers were entered by a passage opening in the side of the barrow; but a dummy portal was still placed at the east end, leading nowhere. Most of the Cotswold long barrows are of this later "false passage-grave" type exemplified in fig. 3. Finally, as in the St. Nicholas long barrow, the side chambers degenerated into mere cists without entrances. The long barrows of Brecknockshire belong, for the most part, to this late stage.
The makers of long barrows belonged to the Mediterranean race. The evidence of long barrow skulls is quite consistent. This burial custom continued until the invasion of the beaker-folk, but one must not imagine that the Mediterranean natives stopped making long barrows the moment the beaker-folk landed.
All bell barrows belong to the early part of the bronze age. They are very common in Wiltshire, and some of them have yielded rich burial goods of gold and bronze. A pit, roughly cir cular, was first dug in the chalk; the corpse was then placed in it with the grave-goods. A mound of earth was piled on the top, and last of all a shallow ditch was dug round and the contents thrown up over the skirt of the mound. The digging of the ditch was probably a ritual performance, for in the case of certain barrows (which seem to belong to an earlier date) the ditch was much deeper and very irregularly dug, having originally served a practical purpose—that of a quarry for obtaining the material of the mound. The material of which earthen long barrows were made was certainly derived from the side ditches which flank it.
This question of the method of construction, though impor tant, has been little studied. A shallow ritual ditch may easily survive, but it is less easy to see why any change at all should have taken place. In a late bell barrow, at Roundwood in Hamp shire, the material of the mound consisted entirely of scraped-up soil, dark in colour, such as would be obtained from the surface of a ploughed field. If during the long-barrow period there were few cultivated fields, and if later they became very common, it might be found easier to obtain the material by scraping up soil than by laboriously quarrying the hard chalk. However, so far as superficial observation goes, a great many round barrows seem to be made entirely of quarried chalk.
Disk Barrows.—The ritual ditch reached its highest develop ment in the disk barrow, which consists of a ditch, nearly always perfectly circular, with a bank generally on its outer side, sur rounding a platform of bare level ground. In the centre is a small, low mound of earth, covering (in every recorded instance) an interment of burnt bones. In no instance has a primary inhuma tion been found in a disk barrow. The diameter of disk barrows varies, but normally it is about 15o feet. There are two types of disk barrows, both more or less contemporary. Sometimes, in the commonest type of disk barrow, there is more than one central mound.
The disk barrows belong exclusively to the early part of the bronze age. They are thus roughly contemporary with bell bar rows ; but in bell barrows there have been found both beakers and copper knives. These objects are characteristic of the very earliest phase, and as they have never been found in a disk barrow it is reasonable to infer that disk barrows did not come into fash ion until later. The fact, too, that the burials in them are in variably cremated points in the same direction.
In at least 25 cases certain ribbed beads of glass or faience have been found associated with early bronze age burials. The age and provenance of these beads is disputed. Sir Flinders Petrie, Pro fessor Sayce, and Dr. Hall regarded them as Egyptian, but Sir Arthur Evans has suggested that they may have come from Crete. Opinions differ also with regard to their age. The dates mentioned by Sir Arthur Evans all fall between i600 and I 1 oo B.C., and this covers the dates sug gested by others and 140o to 1200 B.C. would appear to be a central date, and one in agree ment with the opinions of Egyp tologists. The matter is of prime importance for British prehistoric chronology; and since out of the 25 separate instances where the beads have been found no less than five were in disk barrows, it may be concluded firstly, that all normal disk barrows are con temporary, and secondly that their date falls round about 1400-1200 B.C.
The beads in question are sometimes referred to as the "Stonehenge beads." But the only reason for associating them with Stonehenge is that they have been found in two separate barrows near Stonehenge. That, of course, proves nothing. It is quite usual to find regimental buttons and empty cartridge-cases in the same barrows, but this does not prove that Stonehenge was built by the British army.
The burials in disk barrows are supposed, from the nature of the grave-goods—the supposition is not necessarily correct—to have been the burial-places of women. We may, if we like, associate this fact with the supposed matriarchy of the Picts. The disk bar row was certainly an elaborate kind of burial-place, likely to have been used only for important people.
It has been suggested that these are the burial-places of a man and his wife. There is no evidence to disprove this and it seems not unlikely. Sometimes, however, three mounds are included within the ditch. Triple barrows are less common—and do not necessarily disprove the husband and wife hypothesis.
Elsewhere in stony countries, instead of digging a pit, they made a Gist of four slabs of stone; and instead of a ditch they surrounded the mound with a ring of upright stones. Sometimes the ring of stones was there without the mound. That stone circles were invariably burial-places would be hard to prove ; exhaustive excavation of all or nearly all such circles could alone achieve it. But in all cases where such excavation has been undertaken, some remains of a burial have been found in the centre ; and one may conclude that, even if they served some additional object, their primary purpose was sepulchral.
As in countries where stone is available it was used for the tomb itself and the surrounding enclosure, so the disk barrow was perhaps merely an attempt to reproduce the stone circle in a stoneless country. A burial-pit is certainly a substitute—the only possible one—for a stone cist ; for even in Wiltshire, in the re gions where sarsen stones occur, stone cists were actually made. Thus near Avebury several sarsen-cists have been found, some of them containing beakers. Moreover, the usual ring of stones surrounds the barrow too. Stony countries are the rule, and stoneless ones, like most of Wessex, the exception. in western Europe; and England was almost the first stoneless country that the beaker-people had met with in their wanderings. In those parts of England where stone occurs they would follow their usual practice; and in others they would conform as closely to it as the altered conditions permitted.
Of the burial customs that obtained in England between about I200 and about boo B.C. we know very little. Probably many cremation barrows belong to this period. Towards the close of the period, if not before, began those invasions of Continental tribes bringing with them, like their "beaker" predecessors, the knowledge of a new metal—iron. At least four different varieties of pottery may be associated with the tribes which took part in this invasion ; though not all these varieties are necessarily con temporary. Barrows were not invariably thrown up over the cremations; it was a common practice to dig a hole in an existing barrow and put the cinerary urn with the bones in it. Several barrows, made at an earlier date perhaps, have been found thus "potted." One found in 1925 on Woodminton down in south Wilts contained 28 burials in urns, all more or less fragmentary, only eight being capable of complete restoration.
The finger-tip people invaded Yorkshire, for their pottery has recently been found at Scarborough on the site where later the Romans built a signal station. A still later wave of invaders built barrows—the only iron age barrows known in this country. They are called the Danes' graves and some, still to be seen in a small copse near Driffield in the East Riding, contained remains char acteristic of the first La Tene period (500-300 B.c.) . The barrows are quite small and are placed close together.
The later iron age people, whom Caesar found here, buried in urn-fields, the most celebrated being those at Aylesford and barrows described ; they are generally at no great depth in the body of the mound. Such remains have been found in Wiltshire in disk barrows as well as in more bulky mounds, and in that county they are much more common than flat cemeteries. In the Cotswolds secondary interments of the Anglo-Saxon period have been found in the long barrows at Swell, Crawley and Lyneham.
On the Berkshire downs is a gigantic mound called now Scut chamer Knob, which is the modern form of Cwichelmes-hlew. It is two miles from West Ilsley, but is best approached from West Hendred and Ginge on the north. This mound is mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle under the year i o86, where it is said that the Danes went along Ashdown, that is to say along the Ridgeway, to Cwichelmes-hlew. It was probably the burial-mound of Cwichelm, the first king of Wessex. A similar mound may have existed at Challow, near Wantage—the hill of Ceawa.
A celebrated find of gold jewellery was made in a barrow in Taplow churchyard. It is probable that this barrow was of Anglo-Saxon construction, for the name of Taplow originally signified the hill of Taepa ; and by analogy we may conclude that by his "hill" was meant his barrow. (The difference in connota tion between beorh, barrow, and hlaew, hill, is unknown, but hlaew may have meant a big hill, both natural and artificial.) In Kent are a number of Saxon barrows. Like the Danes' graves, they occur in large numbers, set close together, and are small. There is a group in Greenwich park and another on Bar ham downs. Both groups contained burials of the pre-Christian period (A.D. 450-600). Mounds might have been visible over the graves in some of the other so-called "flat" cemeteries, did not these nearly always occur on ploughed land. These small mounds would rapidly disappear by ploughing; and the site of the Saxon settlement being generally the same as that of the mediaeval and Swarling in Kent. It is possible that mounds covered these inter ments and were ploughed away, but there is no such evidence.
One class of mound sometimes called a barrow, seldom, if ever, yields an interment. It consists of a low, flat rectangular mound rather like a pillow ; there is often a longitudinal crease down the middle, and sometimes grooves or creases at right angles to and on either side of the central one. These mounds often occur near and within hill-top camps, but may be of more recent date. One of the best groups is that on Steeple Langford Cowdown, near Yarnbury in Wiltshire. No satisfactory explanation of the purpose of these mounds has ever been put forward. It has been suggested that they are artificial rabbit warrens, but such temptations to burrow seem rather superfluous. One such in Hollybush camp on the Malvern hills has been twice excavated without providing a solution of the problem.