ABSTRACT
First of all, the burial-rite is typically contracted inhumation under round barrows, whose abundance at once recalls those of this period in Holland and North-West Germany. The latter indeed have very marked peculiarities of structure. Within the covering mound of sand, the actual grave was enclosed in a timber structure, broadly speaking of one of two kinds: either a ditch-bedded round or polygonal affair of logs laid upon each other, with a domed sod-and-branch or log roof, or a ring, single or double, of upright posts, their tops encircling the brow of the mound.1 Later2 a multiple ring of such posts might be relegated to the rim of a mound built of sods and so independently stable. The domed log type is best represented in the Veluwe, the post-barrows in the North, and just as both stone and wood grave-enclosures have been seen (pp. 221-3) to occur in the kurgan barrows of the EastEuropean steppe, and recur in the Corded-ware culture of Central Germany and its Jutland offshoot, so in Holland the same idea reappears in these specialized forms, each repre senting an earthed-up house for the dead, answering to the round hut-form which at Nahermemmingen (p. 257) and in Bavaria characterizes the Bell-beaker people, and was doubtless one of their contributions to the Dutch cultural blend. In the derivative British barrows an'internal dome, e.g. of flints or clay, may correspond to the Dutch domed log structure, but post-barrows are less manifest, though there is one on Calais Wold in Yorkshire, and a later development will meet us presently. However, Britain has a remarkable series of evidently ceremonial circles, in which one may see a ritualized similar round house not earthed up for the dead but open to the sky.3 They are regularly surrounded by a ditch, and outside it a large bank should have accommodated spectators of rites conducted in the space within, to which one or two causeways give entrance. The Arminghall monument near Norwich is a leading simple example, with posts in horseshoe formation, and the pottery found there is a form of the rustic ated ware of which we have seen something with grooved ware and B2 beakers, but which makes a very definite contribution also to A Beaker material. So the whole series should be
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