She should in ground unsanctified have lodged Till the last trumpet; _for charitable prayers, Shards, flints, and pebbles should be thrown on her_.
There are no shards (fragments of pottery) in the Crô-Magnon graves, but flints and pebbles mingle with shells, teeth, and other charms and amulets. Vast numbers of perforated shells have been found in the burial caves near Mentone. In one case the shells are so numerous that they seem to have formed a sort of burial mantle. "Similarly," says Professor Osborn, describing another of these finds, "the female skeleton was enveloped in a bed of shells not perforated; the legs were extended, while the arms were stretched beside the body; there were a few pierced shells and a few bits of silex. One of the large male skeletons of the same grotto had the lower limbs extended, the upper limbs folded, and was decorated with a gorget and crown of perforated shells; the head rested on a block of red stone." In another case "heavy stones protected the body from disturbance; the head was decorated with a circle of perforated shells _coloured in red_, and implements of various types were carefully placed on the forehead and chest". The body of the Combe-Capelle man "was decorated with a necklace of perforated shells and surrounded with a great number of fine Aurignacian flints. It appears", adds Osborn, "that in all the numerous burials of these grottos of Aurignacian age and industry of the Crô-Magnon race we have the burial standards which prevailed in western Europe at this time."[35]
[35] _Men of the Old Stone Age_, pp.304-5.
It has been suggested by one of the British archæologists that the necklaces of perforated cowrie shells and the red pigment found among the remains of early man in Britain were used by children. This theory does not accord with the evidence afforded by the Grimaldi caves, in which the infant skeletons are neither coloured nor decorated. Occasionally, however, the children were interred in burial mantles of small perforated shells, while female adults were sometimes placed in beds of unperforated shells. Shells have been found in early British graves. These include _Nerita litoralis_, and even _Patella vulgata_, the common limpet. Holes were rubbed in them so that they might be strung together. In a megalithic cist unearthed in Phoenix Park, Dublin, in 1838, two male skeletons had each beside them perforated shells (_Nerita litoralis_). During the construction of the Edinburgh and Granton railway there was found beside a skeleton in a stone cist a quantity of cockle-shell rings. Two dozen perforated oyster-shells were found in a single Orkney cist. Many other examples of this kind could be referred to.[36]