rictly sepulchral; the Food
Vessels and Drinking Cups seem also to have been reserved for funeral
rites, as they are not found apart from the Barrows, and placed beside
the dead ceremonially, to contain provision for the Spirit in its
voyage to the distant land to which it had departed. Both Food Vessels
and Drinking Cups are rare in Wiltshire. Two were presented to the
Salisbury Museum in 1915, both of which came from Hampshire. A similar
vessel was found at Bulford in 1910, and is in the same collection.

The "finds" in the Round Barrows are not, however, confined to
pottery. Weapons, some of stone, some of bronze, and occasional
ornaments of gold and amber shed further light upon this departed race
of Salisbury Plain. Although this people has been referred to as a
"Bronze Age" people, it does not follow that their weapons were made
exclusively of that material. In all ages there is a perceptible
overlap from the former culture. In much later days the bow and arrow
lingered on long after the introduction of fire-arms; so, too, in
these early times, the stone implement was used side by side with the
more recent metal one. Axes both perforated and unperforated have been
found, but it is distinctly significant of an advancing culture, that
the perforated axes outnumber the older form. Several of these stone
hammer-axes have been found associated with bronze daggers and celts,
showing that the use of stone and bronze was contemporaneous.

Dagger blades of flint have also been found in barrows, though not
commonly. Four such blades, which might perhaps have been javelin
heads, were found in one barrow at Winterbourne Stoke. They represent
a very high standard of workmanship, and elegance of form and finish.
Three are of a delicate leaf-shape, while the fourth is
lozenge-shaped. Flint arrow-heads when found are always finely barbed.
The bronze objects, however, are in excess of those of stone, thus
showing that the new bronze was displacing the older flint implement.
Moreover, all the bronze weapons are of an early type. This is of some
considerable importance, since it would seem to indicate that the
Barrows were erected very shortly after Stonehenge, which it will be
remembered has been referred to an early period of the Bronze Age.
Certainly only a very short interval separates the completion of
Stonehenge and the building of the Barrows; or to put it in other
words, before Stonehenge was built there only existed two, o