PREHISTORIC INTERMENT NEAR WALTON-ON-NAZE. 201
accommodate the body. The grave was very carefully and
smoothly finished, and so shaped that the head was resting in
a very comfortable looking position, slightly raised above the
body. The body was placed with the head pointing towards the
north, and the face to the east. It was lying on its left side,
the hands were drawn up in front of the face, the right leg was
folded in the usual position, but the left leg was kept straight
out ; it was brought straight upwards so that the left foot was
in front of, and close to, the face, although at a higher level
in the grave.
The body had been wrapped round with the tough roots of
the sand-grass, which may easily be obtained in strong cords
many feet in length. Mr. Miller Christy has suggested to me
that this was probably used as a binding to keep the body in
its contracted position.
I have submitted samples of this decayed grass which was
found covering the bones, to Dr. A. B. Rendle, Keeper of Botany
in the Natural History Museum. He kindly undertook its
examination, but did not find it possible to determine the
species with precision. It was very probably the common
twitch, but it might be the marram-grass or some nearly allied
species. It was certainly one of this group. Among the washings
of the bones, I obtained some seeds which Mr. Clement Reid
pronounced to belong to one of the larger grasses, but they were
not sufficiently well preserved for determination.
Before removing the vertebrae from their position in the
grave, I noticed that there was a considerable quantity of
gritty substance occupying the position of the viscera. This
proved to be composed of seeds, which were undoubtedly the
remains of food which the man had eaten. Mr. Clement Reid
kindly undertook to examine these, and reports that the majority
of them belong to the Blackberry, together with a smaller number
of Rose and Atriplex. Mr. Reid observes that the precise
form of rose to which the seeds may belong is uncertain, but
that this is neither the Rosa arvensis, nor the R. spinosissima,
although either of these might be expected to occur. Both the
blackberry and the rose were undoubtedly eaten.
With regard to the Atriplex seeds, these are quite as abundant
as those of the rose, and from the special circumstances of their
discovery inside the body of the man, it seems to me that they