for the perplexing contradictions in which their system everywhere involves them. In the instance of the Kennet long barrow there is no excuse for such a suggestion. All the interments were of one age, and that undoubtedly the age of the chamber in which they were found, and the pottery and flints could not have been there before nor introduced afterwards. Indeed, I do not know a single instance of an undoubtedly secondary interment, unless it is in the age of Canon Greenwell's really prehistoric tumuli. When he publishes his researches, we shall be in a condition to ascertain how far they bear on the theory.[1] In the chambered tumuli secondary interments seem never to occur; and nothing is more unlikely than that they should. As Dr. Thurnam himself states: "In three instances at least Mr. Cunnington and Sir R. C. Hoare found in long barrows skeletons which, from their extended position and the character of the iron weapons accompanying them, were evidently Anglo-Saxon."[2] A simple-minded man would consequently fancy that they were Anglo-Saxon graves, for what can be more improbable than that the proud conquering Saxons would be content to bury their dead in the graves of the hated and despised Celts whom they were busy in exterminating.[3]
If the above reasoning is satisfactory and sufficient to prove that the long barrow at West Kennet is of post-Roman times, it applies also to Rodmarton, Uley, Stoney Littleton, and all the Gloucestershire long barrows which, for reasons above given (ante, page 164), we ventured to assign to a post-Roman period; and
- ↑ An argument for secondary interments has been attempted to be founded (Lubbock, 'Prehistoric Times,' p. 156) on an edict of Charlemagne, in which he says:—"Jubemus ut corpora Christianorum Saxonum ad cœmeteria ecclesiæ deferantur et non ad tumulos paganorum (Balusius, 'Cap. Reg. Franc.' i. p. 154). If the expression had been "in tumulos," there might have been something in it; but a fair inference from the edict seems to me to be that even in Charlemagne's time converted Saxons insisted on being buried—probably in tumuli—near where the tombs of their fathers were, and probably with pagan rites, in spite of their nominal conversion.
- ↑ 'Archæologia,' xlii. p. 195.
- ↑ Nothing would surprise me less than the discovery of an interment in the upper part of the barrow at West Kennet, between the roof of the chamber and the dolmen, Many indications in the West Country long barrows lead us to expect that such might be the case, but it by no means follows that it would be secondary. On the contrary, it would probably be, if not the first, at least the chief burial in the mound.
