Grave-mounds may, naturally, be divided into the three great periods; the Celtic, the Romano-British, and the Anglo-Saxon. This division will be adopted in the present volume, and it will be its aim, while speaking of the characteristics of each, to classify and describe their contents, and to point out, briefly, such circumstances of interment, and such evidences of customs, as they may present, and which may appear to be of sufficient interest and importance to its plan. Of the forms of barrows, and their characteristics and modes of construction, occasion will be taken to speak in a later chapter. CHAPTER II. Ancient British, or Celtic, Period--General characteristics of the Barrows--Modes of construction--Interments by inhumation and by cremation--Positions of the body--Hitter Hill Barrow--Elliptical Barrow at Swinscoe--Burial in contracted position--In sitting and kneeling positions--Double interments. The barrows of the Celtic, or ancient British, period vary in their form and size as much as they do in their modes of construction, and in their contents. Sometimes they are simply mounds of earth raised over the interment; sometimes heaps of stones piled up over the body; and sometimes again a combination of cist and earth and stone. Generally speaking the mounds are circular, rising gradually and gently from the level of the ground towards the centre, but in some instances the rise is somewhat acute. Now and then they are oval in form. Where elliptical barrows occur (generally known as “long barrows”), they are, I have reason to believe, not matters of original design, but of accident, through additional interments; and I much doubt the propriety of archæologists at the present day continuing the very questionable nomenclature adopted by Sir R. C. Hoare and others. In some cases, however, as in the instances of chambered or walled tumuli, the elliptical form of the barrow can be easily understood. An examination of a very large number of barrows leads me to the opinion that the original form of all was circular, and that no deviation from that form, and no difference in section, can be taken as indicative of period or of race. The other appellation occasionally used, of “twin barrows,” is further evidence of this--two interments having been made within a short distance of each other, and the mounds raised over them running into and joining each other. It may, however, for purposes of description, and for this alone, be well to retain the names, while discarding much of the theory and of the system which has been attempted to be established regarding them.