as it certainly did in Denmark and Switzerland. And we strongly incline to Canon Greenwell's maturer conclusion that many of the ordinary bowl-shaped mounds belong to it. Apart from all other indications. the comparatively brief endurance of the Bronze age and the great number of the round barrows lead one to conclude that these tumuli could not all have been piled up in so short a time. A period estimated as lasting for only 700 years could hardly have witnessed the accumulation of nineteen out of twenty of the pre-historic cairns.
Canon Greenwell confirms the opinion that no differences of custom can he traced between the people of the Bronze age and those of the Neolithic age. His Yorkshire evidence agrees with the result of the Derbyshire explorations, viz., that there is no reason for supposing that the practice of cremation was a funeral rite distinctive of the Bronze period. Inhumation was equally in vogue. All the evidence goes to show that the general adoption in any particular district of one custom or the other was either a tribal peculiarity, or a superstitious ceremony, oy (perhaps more probably) the result of circumstances. Inhumation was the rule on the Wolds, where a tree is now a rarity, and wood must have always been scarce. Cremation was generally practiced in Cleveland, where the different nature of the soil would admit of the growth of timber. It cannot be said of course that the adoption of cremation was wholly dependent on abundance of fuel, but it was probably one of the determining circumstances, Indeed, each addition to our knowledge seems to show that in very early times races and customs were mixed, and that social improvement took place amongst peacefully mingling races, rather than from conquering invaders. Not that there was peace in the land: tribe fought with tribe, and many a hill-fort now-a-days marks the scene of desperate conflicts of old, But modern research has destroyed the notion that such a momentous change as the introduction of metal was brought about by an exterminating swoop of a foreign and superior race.
Canon Greenwell makes it clearer than ever that natural conditions will account for many divergences of habit. In Derbyshire, where stone is abundant, nearly every interment is protected by a cist, a rude clamber constructed of rough stone slabs. On the Yorkshire Wolds, where such slabs must have been brought from a distance, cists are almost entirely wanting. The greater frequency of bronze in the southern counties is doubtless due to the opportunity of dealing with the Phoenician traders, though on the other land, and curiously enough, the Wold dwellers seem to have boon poorer in jet and amber decorations than many of the inland tribes.
The exact significance of depositing articles of value with the dead is not advanced towards certainty by Canon Greenwell's book. The difficulty is that the custom existed, but by no means to a sufficient extent to equip the deceased for the supposed requirements of the future life. The gift to the departed must be looked upon as symbolical, rather than as intended for actual use, and this view seems borne out by the practice of placing vessels, which doubtless contained food, with the ashes
