55 



X. Report on the excavation of the Earthwork known as 

 Ambresbury Banks, Epping Forest. 



By Major- General A. Pitt-Rivers, F.R.S., President of the 



Anthropological Institute. 



[Read at the Chelmsford Meeting of the Club, August 13th, and at the 

 York Meeting of the British Association, September 5th, 1881.] 



Plates III., IV., and V. 



Epping Forest contains two camps about two miles apart, 

 concerning which there are some local traditions. These 

 camps owe their preservation to the fact of this region 

 having been always forest and not cultivated ground ; and 

 this is a point worth noting on the part of those who are 

 inclined to lay stress on the value of tradition as evidence of 

 time and place. It is certain that neither Caesar nor Boadicea, 

 nor any of the heroes and heroines of olden times, to whom 

 these things are ascribed, had any special eye for locating 

 themselves in places which might not in after years be 

 destroyed by the plough ; yet tradition concerning these 

 people hangs naturally about such places as remain to us 

 from ancient times, rather than about those innumerable 

 spots in our long and highly cultivated country in which 

 ancient monuments have been destroyed by agriculture. 



If anyone desires by practical experience to test the value 

 of transmitted evidence, let him in the first place sit down, 

 as I have done, to write a paper on Ambresbury Banks from 

 materials derived almost exclusively from the notes of other 

 gentlemen whose knowledge of the matter is greater than his 

 own, and who having diligently watched the excavations 

 made there, whilst he was otherwise engaged in London or 

 elsewhere, have been good euougli to supply him with all he 

 has to base his paper upon. Let him observe how easy it 



