THE EARLY AGE OF GREECE VOL.I by W.Ridgeway 1901

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INHUMATION, CREMATION, AND THE SOUL. 503
placed in a squatting position in the grave, just as bodies were
sometimes placed in a sitting position in the chambered barrows
of Scandinavia^
In Yorkshire the bodies as a rule lay so that the face was
turned south.
In the ' late Celtic ' cemetery at Aylesford
in Kent the
dead seem to have been universally cremated. "The graves
were described as consisting of round pits from two to three
feet deep and large enough to contain two or three urns, each
of varying dimensions, some no bigger than a man's fist, but for
the most part containing burnt bones'^"
There can be little doubt from the British coins found at
the same time that we have here a cemetery of the Belgae who
had crossed into Kent not very long before our era. These
Belgae were said to be Cimbri, and it is not surprising then to
lind cremation the universal practice of a people who had
already begun it at least by 1200 B.C.
As tliere is
good reason for believing that the Belgae
conquered Dorset, Wiltshii'e, and Cornwall, it is not surprising
that w^e should hnd cremation the prevailing practice
in areas wliei'e Belgic tribes were the dominant race.
The Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, who settled in Britain,
naturally brought with them their own national funeral rites,
whi