Nov., i893. LAKE-DWELLINGS AT GLASTONBURY. 345 



Their huts were round and, as at Mount Caburn, near Lewes, com- 

 posed of wattle. They grew wheat, and had sheep, cattle of the small 

 Bos longifyons breed, pigs, horses, and dogs. They did not, however, 

 rely wholly on the domestic animals for food, but, at times, ate the 

 stags, roedeer, beavers, and otters living in the district. 



They ground their corn in well-fashioned querns, and boiled the 

 food by putting hot stones into the pots filled with cold water. It 

 is strange to note among these the "potato stones" of the 

 neighbourhood. 



A spur of a fighting-cock renders it probable that they were 

 given to cock-fighting like the ancient Gauls. 



They rode or drove horses with iron snaffle-bits, and fought at 

 close quarters with daggers, halberts, and bill-hooks, and at a 

 distance with slings. Vast numbers of clay pellets (= the Roman 

 " glandes") for slings, both burned and unburned, have been met with. 



The position of the settlement in the marsh implies the fact 

 that warfare was the normal social condition, and testifies to the 

 danger of attack from neighbouring communities. 



A fragment of a human skull, long, and with a low forehead, 

 and strong frontal sinuses, implies that some of the inhabitants 

 belonged to the long-headed section of the Britons. It may further 

 be remarked that a shaft of a human humerus, gnawed by some weak- 

 jawed carnivore such as the dog, was also found in one of the huts. 



It remains now to sum up the place of these remains in British 

 Archaeology. The pottery is distinctly of Southern derivation and of 

 the Late Celtic type, which belongs to the late period of the Iron Age, 

 before the Roman influence had fully penetrated into Britain. 

 Although the split-ring fibula and the bone links are identical with 

 forms of Romano-British type, the absence of Roman pottery and of 

 coins implies that the Roman civilisation had not yet arrived in the 

 Isle of Glastonbury. Roman pottery, it may be noted, abounds in 

 other sites in the district. On a comparison with the Late Celtic 

 remains found by General Pitt- Rivers at Mount Caburn, near Lewes, 

 it will be found that the iron tools and weapons, the earthenware 

 " glandes," the pottery, and the various other articles, and the wattle- 

 work, are practically the same, and belong, therefore, to the same 

 age. The whole group of domestic animals, including the fighting- 

 cock, is also the same in both. The safety-pin brooches, too, are of 

 late Celtic type, and similar to that found in the Late Celtic cemetery 

 at Aylesford, explored by Mr. Arthur Evans. We may, therefore, 

 fix, with tolerable certainty, the age of these Lake-dwellers as being 

 just before the time that rhe Roman influence was directly felt in the 

 West of England, and certainly before the Roman Conquest. The 

 discovery is most important. When fully worked out it will probably 

 throw a flood of light on the history of pre-Roman Britain. 



W. Boyd Dawkins. 



