height, 3 in. in diameter at the mouth, and contains about a quarter of a pint. These are almost precisely the measurements of the cup found at Broad Down in the year 1868, and described and figured in this Journal.[1] Indeed, so closely do these two examples resemble one another in form, in size, in material and general appearance, that it might be concluded that they proceed from one and the same atelier In recording, however, the features of analogy between these two drinking-cups, it should be mentioned that the example which has been lately brought to light is not so well preserved as its predecessor. In the later instance the entire surface is blurred and fretted, and wants the smoothness and polish of the original. The ornamentation also is by no means distinctly to be traced; and whilst the form of the bowl tapers downwards from the rim and terminates in a cone, yet the point is rounded off abruptly, so as to admit of the cup standing upon its base. (See fig. 8; also fig. 9, already given in this Journal in 1868, and here repeated for the advantage of more ready comparison.)
Subsequently a third barrow of this group of seven has been investigated. It lay about twenty yards to the south of the central tumulus, and, attaining a perpendicular height of about 6 ft., was about 90 ft. in diameter. We found, as before, a mass of peat and clay piled upon a central cairn of flints. within this, at the base of the barrow, was the interment of burnt bones, completely enshrouded within an accumulation of the roots of the furze; and near to the bones were the fragments of a bronze implement, too much decayed to enable us to recognise the type. Outside the cairn, on its southern side, was an accumulation of charcoal, marking, doubtless, the spot where the process of cremation occurred.
The opening of these barrows affords, it is presumed, a complete insight into the mode of burial which prevailed at the time that the barrow-builders lived in East Devon. In each instance we have found that the mound has been raised over calcined human bones, which, in many cases, lay in the same place on the natural surface of the ground that they occupied when the embers of the funeral pyre were smothered by the casting up of the earth of the tumulus. The bones
- ↑ Archaeological Journal, vol. xxv. p. 296. and Transactions of the Devonshire Association, vol. ii. p. 626.
