Note 723 — Chapter IV
Reading edition
Archaeologia, xliii, 1871, pp. 293-5, 303-4; Folk-Lore, vi, 1895, pp. 14-5. Pitt-Rivers (Excavations in Cranborne Chase, iv, 145) suggests that the common form of disk barrows ‘may have arisen through a failure to carry out the original intention’. ‘The first idea,’ he continues, ‘of the mourners ... may probably have been to erect a large monument ... and the ditch in such a case would contain a large area. In the course of a few days, however, the grief may have abated, and laziness supervened, in which case the arrested tumulus would assume the form described. The habit of all primitive peoples ... of lashing themselves up into a frenzy on the occasion of a death, and general excitability upon any uncommon occurrence, followed by a speedy relapse, favours this hypothesis. When, however, a vallum is seen to follow the line of the ditch, this cause cannot be assigned to the particular structure. It may, however, be a form that has become persistent and conventionalized through the cause already mentioned.’ This ingenious theory seems to imply that the motive of laziness only began to operate when disk barrows came into fashion.
The few disk barrows of Derbyshire have no apparent ditches (Vict. Hist. of ... Derby, i, 169). That county also contains barrows constructed differently and of different materials from those which undoubtedly belong to the Bronze Age: their date is uncertain, but may be Romano-British (ib., pp. 186-9; Proc. Soc. Ant., 2nd ser., xv, 1893-5, p. 427).
Mr. G. F. Tregelles (Vict. Hist. of ... Cornwall, i, 358) thinks that in Cornwall the distinctions between conical, bowl, bell, flat, and ring barrows ‘may be little more than differences in height’.