File:The jottings of some geological, archaeological, botanical, ornithological and zoological rambles around Macclesfield (1878) (14597746719).jpg

Identifier: jottingsofsomege00sain (find matches)
Title: The jottings of some geological, archaeological, botanical, ornithological and zoological rambles around Macclesfield
Year: 1878 (1870s)
Authors: Sainter, J. D
Subjects:
Publisher: Macclesfield : Swinnerton and Brown
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Internet Archive

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d to a great heat ; and scattered among them,towards the top, there was picked out some fragments ofcalcined human bones. This cairn had been built up froman excavation that had been made into the surface soil,and it was surrounded by other cairns (how many notnamed), which had been formed on the surface, and acircle of large stones enclosed the whole. No other in-terments are mentioned. Some of these cairns were fourfeet high and two-and-a-half in diameter, and this ratherunusual assemblage of ancient forms of burial was overlaidby a covering of earth one yard in thickness, which repre-sented a tumulus on rather a large scale. The urn wouldprobably contain the ashes of some person of note ; andthe deposit of bones lying outside of it, was possibly theremains of a wife, servant, captive, or slave, whom fromthe most remote periods it had been the custom toimmolate upon the death of a chieftain or the head of afamily ; and this act was occasionally a voluntary one on the Mml t ^ (try ^M
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FOOD VESSEL. CELTIC. 5 part of the victim. The same remark may be applicableto those fragments of calcined bones observed to bescattered among the blackened stones on the upper part ofthe central cairn ; and it is not unlikely, that if the floorof this cairn had been examined, there would have beenexposed another burial deposited in a rude stone cist, orotherwise, accompanied by flint or bone instruments, andthis would have been the original or primary intermentof Celtic date. The latest interment was that of theurn burial, and probably it contained the incineratedremains of a distinguished Saxon ; and the othercairns, with the surrounding stone circle, may havebeen erected in honour to his memory; unless theyrepresented an interment by inhumation or cremationclose to each. It is customary to find in barrows,which contain besides the Celtic burial, those of alater period which lie nearer to the top or sides of themound, and these will refer to Romano-British, andAnglo-Saxon times. Abo

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