On the pilasters is incised a pattern of circles and V-shaped signs. A
somewhat similar arrangement of pilasters is seen in two rock-tombs at
Cava Lavinaro in the same district. This work forcibly recalls the work
of the megalithic builders in the hypogeum of Halsaflieni in Malta (see
Chap. VII), and on the façades of the Giants' Tombs in Sardinia (see
below). It affords, at any rate, a presumption that in all three
islands we have to deal with the same civilization if not the same
people.

Such a presumption is not weakened by the fact that in Sicily the usual
form of tomb was the rock-hewn sepulchre, which, as will be seen later,
is very often a concomitant of the megalithic monument, and in many
cases is proved to be the work of the same people. In the early
neolithic period in Sicily, called by Orsi the Sicanian Period,
rock-hewn tombs seem not to have been used. It is only at the beginning
of the metal age that they begin to appear. In this period, the
so-called First Siculan, the tomb-chamber was almost always circular or
elliptical, entered by a small door or window in the face of the rock.
The dead were often seated round the wall of the chamber, evidently
engaged in a funerary feast, as is clear from the great vase set in
their midst with small cups for ladling out the liquid. A single tomb
often contained many bodies, especially in cases where the banquet
arrangement was not observed; one chamber held more than a hundred
skeletons, and it has been suggested that the bodies were only laid in
the tomb after the flesh had been removed from the bones, either
artificially or as the result of a temporary burial elsewhere. Such a
custom is not unknown in other parts of the megalithic area. With these
bodies were found large quantities of painted pottery, a few implements
of copper and many of flint. Among the ornaments which the dead
carried--for they seem to have been buried in complete costume--were