EARLY MAN
south and 45 ft. east and west, with a rise of 3 ft. above the surface: being placed upon a slope it has probably slipped and suffered slight change of form. 'It was constructed as follows: a circle of large and rough native sandstones was laid on the surface of the ground, marking the extent of the supposed mound. Near the centre of this circle the urn was placed, mouth upwards, probably in a cairn of stones; then a quantity of rough sandstone was thrown in, and afterwards covered with sandy clay or loam.'[1] The urn was of the two-tier variety, hand-made, decorated on the outside, on the apex, and on the interior by rope pattern in chevron designs. The contents were burnt human bones, burnt flint implements and flakes, and a 'broken nodule of jasper flint.' In the barrow itself were found also the burnt tooth of an ox, animal bones, charcoal, numerous flint flakes and implements, among them a barbed arrow-head, pieces of coal and quartz pebbles.
This is a characteristic interment. Technically this mound and urn must be assigned to the Bronze Age; but the deposit itself is significantly suggestive of the neolithic area amid which it is placed.
The excavation of a barrow at Littleboro', further to the east, showed it to contain a similar interment, consisting of an urn, calcined bones, and small pieces of flint. But it is further to the north, on the moorland hills that lie away towards Burnley, that interments of this character are more numerously recorded. These are almost homogeneous, and the single discrepancy of a bronze pin occurring in one instance, only strengthens the suspicion that the real age of these neolithic sites may have been contemporary with the incipient use of bronze, and reciprocally, that these 'round barrows' were fashioned by a people accustomed to the use of flint and to whom bronze was rare. To quote a few examples: At Worsthorne, near Black Hameldon Hill, was a barrow 30 ft. in diameter and 4 ft. in height, in which were found 'flint flakes and arrow-heads,' the centre was occupied by stones arranged like a long sarcophagus with two large stones as cover; on the same site a tumulus 21 ft. in diameter yielded an unglazed urn; a third mound was surrounded by a stone circle, and in it were found calcined human remains; at Briercliffe, in the same region, was a tumulus and earth circle, 27 ft. in diameter, with a 'food-vessel'; near it was a circle of seven stones, from which came 'unglazed urns, human remains, and flint arrow-heads'; at Hellclough was another circle of seven stones, an urn, and the bones of two persons, with the bronze pin previously mentioned; a third circle of seven stones yielded, in addition to an urn and bones, a flint axe.
Further again to the north, on the hillside which forms the northern bank of the Ribble near Stonyhurst, there was examined a circular tumulus which was 115 ft. in diameter, with the result that a 'small flint knife or scraper' was found with 'crushed bones in charcoal,' a bone hone 4 in. long, and the handle of a vessel (seen subsequent to the excavation), the edge of which was crimped. The bone hone was worn as by the sharpening of a metal instrument upon it.
At Wavertree, near Liverpool, there have been made finds of no less importance. Some cinerary urns, reported to be eight in number, containing burnt human bones and ashes, seem, from those which are preserved in the City Museum of Liverpool, to have been possibly of very early date,
- ↑ In Roch. Lit. and Sci. Soc. 1898. Sutcliffe, 'Hades Hill Barrow.'
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