SEPULCHRAL MOUND. The practice of rearing mounds of earth and stone over the resting-place of the dead may be traced to remote antiquity. It had doubtless its origin in the heap of earth displaced by interment which, in the case of the illustrious warrior or chief, it became the practice to raise into the size and form of the barrow or tumulus which is found all over northern Europe, from Great Britain and Ireland to Upside in Sweden and the steppes of Ukraine. Sepulchral mounds of some sort seem, indeed, to have been erected among all the nations of Asia as well as of Europe, and they are found in numbers in Central America. Some of the larger tumuli or moathills are but partially artificial, natural mounds having been added to or shaped into the form which it was wished that they should take. There is considerable diversity in the form of the tumuli, the different forms corresponding to different periods considerably remote frotn each other. The oldest are long-shaped, and in the form of gigantic graves. often depressed in the center and elevated toward one end. Inside the tumelus the body was laid at full length, often along with spear and arrow heads of flint and bone. The bell and bowl-shaped tumuli seem to have succeeded this early form. Within them is often found a short eist and primitive cinerary urn, showing that the body had been burned; but there appears also to be evidence that the processes of inhumation and cremation had been in use contemporaneously, or sometimes the licidy was placed within the eist in a sitting posture. Skeletons of dogs and horses are occasionally found beside the
ashes of the deceased. The sepulchral mounds which seem to be of latest date are broad and low, surrounded sometimes by an earthen vellum, and sometimes, particularly in Scotland and Scandinavia, by a circle of standing stones. In both the inclosed and encircled tumuli, weapons have been found belonging to the period when the metallurgic arts were practiced, and in some instances Roman as well as native relics. A remarka ble form of tumulus frequent in Sweden, and occasionally seen in Scotland, consists of an oblong mound larger than the primitive barrow, and terminated at both ends in a point, whence it has been called the xkibs celunger, or ship-barrow. Scandinavian anti quaries have come to the conclusion that the bodies of the warriors of the deep were sometimes burned in their ships, whose form was repeated in the earthwork reared above their ashes.
The most numerous class of sepulchral monnds in Scotland are the Ca OM (q.v.) or tumuli of stone, which abound in every district of the country, and were often of much larger dimensions than the earthen tumuli. Another species of monument is the cromlech (q. v.).