In most cases antiquaries in this country have been content to appeal to the convenient fiction of secondary interments to account for the perplexing contradictions in which their system everywhere involves them. In the instance of the Kennet long barrow there is no excuse for such a suggestion. All the interments were of one age, and that undoubtedly the age of the chamber in which they were found, and the pottery and flints could not have been there before nor introduced afterwards. Indeed, I do not know a single instance of an undoubtedly secondary interment, unless it is in the age of Canon Greenwell's really prehistoric tumuli. When he publishes his researches, we shall be in a condition to ascertain how far they bear on the theory.[339] In the chambered tumuli secondary interments seem never to occur; and nothing is more unlikely than that they should. As Dr. Thurnam himself states: "In three instances at least Mr. Cunnington and Sir R. C. Hoare found in long barrows skeletons which, from their extended position and the character of the iron weapons accompanying them, were evidently Anglo-Saxon."[340] A simple-minded man would consequently fancy that they were Anglo-Saxon graves, for what can be more improbable than that the proud conquering Saxons would be content to bury their dead in the graves of the hated and despised Celts whom they were busy in exterminating.[341] If the above reasoning is satisfactory and sufficient to prove that the long barrow at West Kennet is of post-Roman times, it applies also to Rodmarton, Uley, Stoney Littleton, and all the Gloucestershire long barrows which, for reasons above given (_ante_, page 164), we ventured to assign to a post-Roman period; and _à fortiori_ it carries with it King Hildetand's tomb at Lethra. It is true we have not the same direct means of judging of its date as we have of our own monuments. The Danes treat with such supreme contempt any monument that does not at once fall in with their system, that they will not even condescend to explore it. So soon as Worsaae found some "flint wedges" in the tomb, he at once decreed that it was prehistoric, and that it was no use searching farther; and we are consequently left to this fact and its external similarities for our identification. Here, again, is a difficulty. The two drawings above given (woodcuts Nos. 101 and 102) may show them too much alike or exaggerate differences. The one is an old drawing from nature, the other a modern restoration; still the essential facts are undoubted. Both are chambered long barrows, ornamented by rows of tall stones, either partially or wholly surrounding their base, and both have external dolmens on their summit, and both contain flint implements. If this is so, the difficulty is rather to account for so little change having taken place in 230 years than to feel any surprise at their not being identical. The point upon which we wish to insist here is that they are both post-Roman, and may