III. 



The Place of the Lake-Dwellings at Glastonbury 

 in British Archaeology.' 



THE discoveries made by Mr. BuUeid in the Lake-dwellings at 

 Glastonbury are of great historical value, and give a remarkable 

 insight into the condition of the inhabitants of Somerset in the Iron 

 Age. Moreover, their archaeological horizon is clearly defined, and 

 they lie close to the frontier which divides the Prehistoric Archaeology 

 from the history of the British Isles. 



The dwellers in the Glastonbury marshes were spinners and 

 weavers, and used whorls of stone and earthenware in twisting their 

 thread, and weights to keep the warp tight on the loom while they 

 worked in the weft with bone shuttles. The weft vv'as pushed home 

 with the weaving combs, which are both abundant and perfect. The 

 weaving comb probably was the ancestor of the comb worn for 

 ornament in the head-dress of later times. Numerous wooden fragments 

 of a kind of frame probably represent the loom. Flax, in all proba- 

 bility, was the material which was woven, although no direct proof 

 has been met with in this settlement. They used bone-needles for 

 sewing. 



They worked wood with great skill with the saw, the bill-hook, 

 the knife, and the gouge, and probably also with the axe and the 

 adze, although the two latter can only be inferred from the workman- 

 ship of the boards, and squared parts of the platform. 



They also used the lathe, and are proved by the "chucks" of 

 Kimmeridge Clay to have turned ornaments of Kimmeridge shale. 

 Some of these have been discovered. 



The lathe-turned vessels, some bearing the marks of a punch 

 found in the settlement, prove that pottery-making was also carried 

 on. Crucibles, and the remains of tuyeres, imply that smelting was 

 also carried on, and a piece of blue glass slag may perhaps imply that 

 glass-working was also practised. A file impHes also metal-working. 

 They used rings of jet, amber, and glass, and of bronze, and brace- 

 lets of bronze and Kimmeridge shale, and beads of glass, and fastened 

 their clothes together with safety-pins and split-ring brooches of 

 bronze, and with bone links similar to those found in Romano-British 

 caves, such as the Victoria Cave in Yorkshire. They also used 

 amulets of bone, among which is a roundel fashioned out of a human 

 occipital. 



1 Abstract of Address, British Association, Nottingham, Anthropological 

 Section. 



