We next take the pre-Roman period. Two examples from France will serve to illustrate one stage. A cemetery at Charvais, belonging to the earliest Iron Age, contained more than seventy graves, all but two or three of which were so oriented that the head lay at the West end[618]. Out of five graves excavated at Pleurs, in the department of Marne, three exhibited a like arrangement[619]. Examples might be multiplied, so far as the Continent is concerned; the position of the skeleton in English interments of the Iron Age unfortunately seems not to have been much noted by investigators. Even the excellent _Guide to the Antiquities of the Early Iron Age_ does not furnish much information about British orientation, the main cause, doubtless, being the neglect of the excavators to record such details. One remarkable interment, at Kilham, near Driffield, in the East Riding, is worthy of notice. The grave contained the remains of a man, with the head placed at the West end; on each side of the body a goat had been laid, with a similar orientation[620]. Mr J. R. Mortimer, who, in 1897, conducted a series of excavations at Kilham, gave this summary respecting the disposition of the skeletons. Of twenty burials, eleven bodies had the head towards the North, five towards the South, and only four West[621]. At the Late-Celtic cemetery at Harlyn Bay, Cornwall, the majority of the skeletons, which were contracted, lay on their left sides, and faced the East. This evidence, which might be supplemented, plainly shows that the placing of corpses East and West was not uniformly observed during the Early Iron Age. But we must widen the scope of the inquiry, for it is necessary to remember that the round barrows of the Bronze and Aeneolithic periods, and the long barrows of the Neolithic Age, were nothing but huge graves. Mr Mortimer’s excavations in the round barrows of Yorkshire led him to the conclusion, that, while no rule could be formulated concerning the alinement of the body, “the most prevalent position of the head [was] to the West and the East[622].” Canon Greenwell’s explorations revealed a like absence of regularity in the position of round-barrow skeletons, though the tables which he furnishes indicate a tendency to an East-and-West approximation. One of his results is of great interest. He found that, wherever the head of the skeleton pointed, roughly speaking, towards the West, the body had generally been laid on its right side; where the head was towards the East, the body was usually resting on its left side[623]. The inference has therefore been drawn that the corpse was made to face, not merely the sun, but the position of the sun in the sky at the time of burial. This opinion has been widely held until recent years, but it is now becoming customary to heap ridicule upon it[624]. The scoffers should, however, in fairness, consider collateral testimony.