A HISTORY OF DERBYSHIRE be evident without excavation. A few have been noted as closely invested with an annular bank. Of these, ' Hob Hurst's House ' on Baslow Moor is a good example, 1 and the writer once saw a very perfect little bar- row of the variety on Eyam Moor. In others, the investing bank is placed at some distance and is usually capped or lined with a row of standing stones a few feet or yards apart ; and of this variety the barrow opened by Mr. Pennington on Abney Moor, and already referred to as destroyed, was a fine example. As the ring expanded, the enclosed mound seems to have become smaller and consequently more easily re- moved by the accidents of time, so that the ring has often survived it. This extreme variant of the barrow will be further considered under circles. The placing of the interments was equally diverse. In the simplest mode of burial, the body (for the moment we disregard cremated re- mains) was deposited upon the ground and over it was heaped the mound. But often more often, perhaps, than is suspected something was done to fence it off from the surrounding space, or to protect it from the material of the mound. The fence in its simplest form con- sisted of larger stones than those ot the cairn, placed around the body ; and from this we pass through gradual transitions to the symmetrical enclosure formed of well-selected natural flag-stones set on edge. Simi- larly, when it was intended to protect the body from the weight of the mound, it was placed beside a large stone or a ledge of rock, against which flat stones were reared, pent-wise over it, or large stones were made to incline against one another from opposite sides like a gable roof, and from these simple devices we can pass through another series of transitions which ends with the box-like cist, constructed, it may be, with considerable skill." Then there was burial in a grave, shallow or deep, large or small, simply filled up with soil or stones, or roofed with one or more flag-stones to form a vault ; and the vault when lined with other flag-stones became an underground cist. Ex- amples of all these have been frequently found in Derbyshire, where, from the abundance of stone, cists and other receptacles constructed of stone have been relatively more numerous than elsewhere. We say of stone, because it must not be overlooked that timber may often have been used for the same purpose. On several occasions it has been noted that a grave or an enclosure was filled with loose stones and soil intermixed with displaced human bones, as though they had rolled into it in a haphazard manner. It is reasonable to think that in these cases the receptacle was originally roofed with timber, which, having decayed, allowed a portion of the mound (with any secondary inter- 1 Diggings, p. 87.
- The term ' cist ' unfortunately is often used in an indefinite manner. In Vestiges, for instance,
a rock-grave is frequently described as a cist ; and in Ten Years' Diggings it is indiscriminately applied to any sort of enclosure with sides formed of flag-stones or walling, whether roofed or otherwise. It would be best to confine the term to the box-like receptacle formed of slabs, enclosure to any enclosed space without a roof, and vault to a roofed grave, chamber being used exclusively for the larger Neolithic receptacle. 170
