Note 790 — Chapter IV
Reading edition
C. Warne, Celtic Tumuli of Dorset, 1866 (‘Tumuli opened at Various Periods’, pp. 10-1, 72, 76). The instance mentioned on p. 72 is, in my opinion, doubtful, and no certain pre-Roman instances are recorded in the sections entitled ‘Personal Researches’ and ‘Communications from Personal Friends’. Prof. Ridgeway (Early Age of Greece, i, 1901, p. 502), referring to Greenwell’s Brit. Barrows, p. 22, states that ‘in Dorsetshire ... the extended position seems to be the prevalent one’, a remark which illustrates the danger of relying on second-hand evidence.
In a few cases in Derbyshire and elsewhere in which the body has been found sitting the posture was perhaps due to some accident in filling up the grave (Archaeologia, xliii, 1871, pp. 318-20; Journ. Brit. Archaeol. Association, xxxviii, 1882, pp. 109-10). Two skeletons, however, were found sitting, back to back, in a barrow in Denbighshire (Crania Britannica, ii, pl. 23, p. 1).