Kingston Down Grave 1

In the first which I opened, which was about three feet deep from the natural surface of the ground (i.e., exclusive of the agger or tumulus, which was about three feet more), I came to the skeleton of a full grown person, lying due east and west, its feet being to the east. The bones in general were very entire. The skull came out whole, with all its teeth very firm, regular, and white, and very strongly fixed in their sockets. I found nothing at all with it: but a little before the workmen got down to it, they found several sherds of an urn of reddish earth, which, I guess, would have held about a pint and a half. It certainly had been disturbed and broken when the grave was dug for the person, here deposited: this place having, as I make no doubt, been a more ancient burial-ground. I mean, that it was used as such long before the custom among the Romans of burning the dead ceased; as also were those at Ash and on Chartham Down. This urn, however, was not an ossuary or bone-urn; but it was of that sort which were used for depositing some kind of liquor, such as wine; milk, etc., it having a very narrow mouth and long neck. This grave had not been dug with more than ordinary care, till the diggers of it came to the bottom, where was a neat and much narrower trench about one foot deep, which seemed to have been made exactly to fit the body of the person buried. Over and around the sides of which was a kind of arch, formed of large flints closely ranged; in the same manner as I had before observed when I dug on Chartham Down. Here were no signs of any, coffin or chest.