64 Report on the excavation of the Earthwork 



rampart is shown by the difference of colour in the interior 

 of the substance. This is due to imperfect baking, and 

 impKes a primitive condition of the art. Up to what period 

 liand-made pottery was used in this country we have no 

 means of knowing ; but where the fragments are entirely 

 hand-made it is reasonable to suppose it to be of early date. 

 The two kinds of pottery found here — the smooth quality, 

 with or without large grains of quartz, and the rough and 

 sandy quality, often red-brick colour on the outside — have 

 been found by me associated together in other camps ; they are 

 British or Komano-British, that is, British before or after the 

 Eoman Conquest. There is no ornamentation on any of the 

 fragments found at Ambresbury Banks which would enable 

 one to fix the date more precisely. Judging by their quality 

 none of the pieces are Koman or Norman, and no fragment 

 of Samian ware has been found. A single fragment of 

 Samian pottery on the old surface line beneath the rampart 

 would have determined the entrenchment to be Eoman. 



Although a few flint flakes have been found in the rampart 

 they are not in sufficient number to prove with certainty that 

 they were in use at the time of the construction of the 

 rampart ; they may have belonged to the soil, and have 

 been turned up with it. They are usually much more 

 plentiful in those camps which belong to the Bronze Age, 

 for there can be little doubt that they were used late into the 

 Bronze Age, if not more recently ; and this fact alone appears 

 to me to imply that this camp is more recent than the 

 Bronze Age.^ 



The excavation of the silting in the ditch showed that it 

 had originally been triangular in its section and pointed at 

 the bottom, the escarp rising at an angle of 45°, and the 

 counterscarp probably at the same angle, though now flatter ; 

 it was 22 feet wide at the top and 10 feet deep, and it has 

 since silted up 7 feet from the bottom. The present centre 

 of the ditch is novv^ about 2 feet to the outside of the old 



^ Although a considerable number of flints were sent to me for 

 examination, the majority, ^Yith the exception of those here named, were 

 natural forms, and showed no evidence of human agency. 



