Note 381 — Chapter III

Archaeologia, xlii, 1869, p. 109. Mr. J. R. Mortimer (Forty Years’ Researches, &c., 1905, p. lxxxi) is ‘slightly inclined to consider that the long barrows [of the Yorkshire Wolds] ... are more recent than the greater number of the round ones’; but the only reason which he gives for this singular opinion, namely, that he has frequently found both long and round skulls in the round barrows of the same district, has no weight against the facts which have led all other investigators to regard the long as earlier than the round barrows. See p. 393, infra. Not only has no metal ever been found with a primary interment in a long barrow, but sepulchral pottery is also wanting. See Man, v, 1905, No. 86, p. 159. If the contents of certain long barrows ‘do not show any features of interest differing from those found in [some] round barrows’ (Forty Years’ Researches, p. xix), that only suggests that long barrows were still made for some time after the first interment in a round barrow took place. See W. Greenwell, Brit. Barrows, pp. 509, 556.