heresy to dispute. As I have already stated, till some one can show at what period flint ceased to be used in any particular locality, this evidence is worthless. With regard to the secondary interments, it appears to be inconceivable that, after the lapse of 500 or 600 years at least, and the civilizing influence of the Roman occupation, any one should choose the top of one of the mounds of the long-forgotten pagan savages for a burying-place. If burying in barrows had been the fashion in Gloucestershire, as it was on the wolds of Yorkshire or the downs of Wiltshire, something might be said in favour of such an hypothesis if we could also assume that the races had been undisturbed in the interval. But there are hardly half-a-dozen tumuli in the whole county. They, like Uley, Rodmarton,[1] Stoney Littleton,[2] are all chambered tumuli of one class and apparently of one age. All too, it may be remarked, are close to Roman stations and surrounded by evidences of Roman occupation.
In the previous pages we have already met with several instances of summit interments, as at Gib Hill, Minning Low, &c., which are certainly not secondary, and we have reason to suspect that more will be found when looked for; and the finding of Roman coins on or near the top of tumuli is too frequent to be accidental, and occurs even in Ireland, where the Romans never went.
We shall have occasion to recur to this subject when speaking of the tomb of King Harald Hildetand at Lethra, and then propose to treat it more in detail; but meanwhile it seems clear that the evidence of the coins and the pottery must be allowed to outweigh that of the flints; and if this is so, not only Uley but all the chamber-tumuli in Gloucestershire or Somerset belong either to the Romano-British, or rather to the post-Roman period of British history.
Another and even more interesting example of this class has recently been brought to light by the Hon. W. O. Stanley, at Plas Newydd, not far from the great dolmen represented on woodcut No. 50.[3] It is a chamber or cist, 3 feet 3 inches
