Note 1221 — Chapter V

Guide to the Ant. of the Early Iron Age (Brit. Museum), pp. 106-7, 110-1. Cf. Crania Britannica, ii, pl. 6 and 7, p. 6. Mr. Reginald Smith (Guide, &c., p. 112) remarks, in regard to the ‘Danes’ Graves’ near Driffield, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, that ‘the bodies lay indifferently on the right or left side, though the majority had the head at the north end of the grave: there was thus’, he adds, ‘no tendency to face the sun, as in the Bronze period’. Since the bodies, on whichever side they lay, would have faced either the morning or the afternoon sun, Mr. Smith’s observation apparently assumes that in the Bronze period corpses were laid so as to face the morning sun, which was far from being an invariable rule. See pp. 188-9, supra, and the authorities there cited; also Wilts Archaeol. and Nat. Hist. Mag., x, 1866, p. 101. Unhappily Sir R. C. Hoare, from whom we learn that in Wiltshire corpses were generally laid with their heads pointing northward, omits to say whether they were laid on the right or the left side. [See Addenda.]