These last examples from Madsen's work are further interesting to us as illustrating the difference between dolmens or chambers always intended to be buried in tumuli and those which were always meant to be exposed. In the chambers at Uby and Smidstrup the stones are placed so closely together that very little packing between them was sufficient to keep out the earth, and the passages to them and other arrangements all indicate their original destination. The case, however, is widely different with the dolmens at Halskov and Valdbygaards, or those at Lüneburg or Höbisch, which evidently are now on their mounds as originally designed. With a very little study it seems easy to detect the original intentions in all these monuments; but there is this further difference. None of those intended to be exposed were ever buried, while many which were meant to have been covered up never received their intended envelope.
A monument having a considerable affinity to the two last quoted exists, or perhaps rather existed, at Axevalla, in Westergothland. It was opened apparently in 1805, and the representations are taken from drawings then made by a Captain Lindgren, who superintended the excavation by the king's command. It consists of one apartment 24 feet long by 8 feet wide and 9 feet high. The sides and roof are composed of slabs of red granite, which, if the plates are to be depended upon, were hewn or at least shaped in some mechanical fashion. Instead of the bodies being laid on the floor of the chamber as was usually the case, and being found mixed up with débris and utensils of various kinds, each of the nineteen who occupied this chamber had a little cist to itself, so small and irregular-shaped, like those at Rose Hill (woodcut No. 39), that the body had to be doubled up, in a most uncomfortable position, to be placed in the cist. This was by no means an uncommon mode of interment in those early ages, but if the skeletons were really found in the attitudes here represented, their interment must date from very recent times indeed. I know there is nothing more common in archæological books than to represent skeletons sitting in most free and easy attitudes in their boxes.[1] But if all the flesh had disappeared as completely as these
- ↑ Bateman, 'Ten Years' Diggings,' p. 23. Lewellyn Jowett, 'Grave Mounds,' pp. 14 and 15, &c.
