56 PICTS' HOUSES. 



cases the "door" is in the roof. Dr. Lisch considers that 

 these last urns are the earliest, and represent a form of 

 dwelling even more ancient than those in which the door 

 is in the side. To me, I confess, it seems more probable 

 that these urns belong to a later period, when the repre- 

 sentation of the dwelling was more conventional, and the 

 resemblance consequently less. 



Many of the dwellings in use during the Bronze Age were 

 no doubt subterranean or semi-subterranean. On almost all 

 large tracts of uncultivated land ancient villages of this 

 character may still be traced. A pit was dug, generally 

 from 6 to 16 feet in diameter, and the earth which was 

 thrown out formed a circular wall, the whole being then 

 probably covered over with boughs. The "Pen -pits/' near 

 Gillingham, in Wiltshire, have been supposed to be of this 

 character, but Gen. Pitt Eivers has clearly shown that they 

 are merely ancient stone quarries. In Anglesea similar hut- 

 circles have been well described by the Honourable Owen 

 Stanley.* On Dartmoor and elsewhere, where large blocks of 

 stone abounded, the natives saved themselves the trouble of 

 excavating, and simply built up circular walls of stone. In 

 other cases, probably when concealment was an object, the 

 dwellings were entirely subterranean. Such ancient dwell- 

 ings are in Scotland known as " weems," from " Uamha," a 

 cave. In one of these, at Monzie, in Perthshire, a bronze 

 sword was discovered.^ Such underground chambers, how- 

 ever, appear to have been used in Scotland as dwellings, or 

 at least as places of concealment, down to the time of the 

 liomans ; for a weem described by Lord Eosehill| was con- 

 structed partly of stones " showing the diagonal and diamond 



* On "Remains of the Ancient t Wilson, Pre- Historic Annals 



Circular Habitations in Holy head of Scotland, vol. i. p. 104. 



Island. By the Hon. W. 0. Stanley, Lord Rosehill, Proc. of theSoc. 



M.P. of Ant. of Scotland, 1869, p. 109. 



