A HISTORY OF DERBYSHIRE While on the one hand the pre-historic people of Derbyshire may often have buried their dead without any attempt to mark off the inter- ment from the surrounding soil, there is evidence on the other hand that their regard sometimes went beyond the mere providing of protective devices in stone or wood. Occasionally the receptacle was paved, or it contained finely broken stones, gravel, clay, or fine earth, upon which the body was laid, or in which it was embedded. On Stanton and Hartle Moors several cists containing cremated remains were filled with fine sand which in one rested upon a bed of heath. In a grave at Shuttlestone near Parwich * the body had been wrapped in a skin and laid upon a couch of fern leaves, traces of both of which still remained. In another grave near Kings Sterndale 2 Mr. Salt found a tenacious clay mixed with grass and leaves which still retained their greenness, but the skeleton had almost disappeared. The preservation of these perishable substances, which under ordinary circumstances must have long since disappeared, was due in the one case to the unusual depth of the grave, and in the other to the clay. It is probable, therefore, that instead of being an exceptional feature they represent a general custom. From the occasional presence of weapons, pins, buttons, studs and the like, occupying positions in natural relation to the body unburnt when associated with unburnt skeletons, and in a burnt condition when mixed with cremated remains, we may infer that the bodies were buried in the one case, and burned in the other, in their ordinary clothing. Burial in barrows in Derbyshire was not confined to one sex or to any particular age. The remains of women and children are found in graves and cists as carefully prepared and associated with implements and ornaments as elaborate as those which appertain to the men, indi- cating, surely, that the family tie was strong and that the lot of the women was not servile. Many of the interments have consisted of more than a single individual. The frequency with which an infant has been found buried with an adult, usually a woman, and presumably the mother, points to infanticide upon the demise of the parent. Similarly, the presence of a woman's remains with those of a man seems to indicate suttee. In other cases we meet with a deposit of burnt bones placed with a skeleton, representing probably a human sacrifice. These in themselves do not necessarily indicate a state of savagery, as the recent prevalence of the practice of suttee in India and of infanticide in China amply prove. Little significance can be attached to the direction of the body and the side upon which it was laid, to judge from the comparatively few cases in which these positions have been recorded. They certainly had no reference to age or sex, at least in Derbyshire ; and this is the Rev. Canon Greenwell's experience in the north. The following table expresses the direction of the body in the 58 known Derbyshire examples : 1 Diggings, p. 34. * Proc. Soc. Ant. ser. z, vol. xvii. 172
