A GALLOWAY STONE-AGE VILLAGE. 7a 
the plan of the substructure bore 30 degrees west of north; in 
Site No. 3, 65 degrees west of north (or west-north-west) ; and in 
Site No. 5, 49 degrees west of north. The same trend—that is, 
north-west by south-east—seems to exist in the other and yet 
unexamined sites. For example, in No. 4 the longer axis appears 
to lie about 18 degrees west of north. 
THE EXCAVATION OF SITE No. 3. 
Dealing first with the excavation of Site No. 3, which proved 
to be the most important station, evidence was soon obtained that 
the depression on the surface was the top of a silted-up pit. The 
digging work consisted at the first stages in the extraction of the 
filled-in material, which was of dark vegetable matter mixed with 
a little sand. 
The walls of the pit were not well defined, but in pene- 
trating into them the soil was found to be more dense and almost 
entirely composed of sand. ‘The cutting revealed in the undis- 
turbed soil round the pit a layer of superficial soil and leaf- 
mould which varied in thickness from about 1 to 2 feet; below 
this was about 14 feet of somewhat blackish, sandy, compact soil. 
Beneath this there was about 5 feet of hard sand, sometimes. 
greyish and sometimes reddish-brown, which rested upon a 
deposit of about 6 inches of a wet mixture of blue clay and grey 
sand. The lowest bed was of wet tough blue clay of unascer- 
tained thickness. The reddish sand occurred in rather irregular 
patches, and its colour varied from a reddish-brown to a dark- 
brown. The deposit of superficial soil was found in various 
places which were tested throughout the plantation. It rests 
upon what seems to have been the surface of the ground at the 
time the sites were in use. 
The material accumulated upon this pre-historic surface is 
not entirely of vegetable character, as it contains a very small 
quantity of sand. Probably a slight sprinkling of sand would be 
brought during gales from the sandy shore to the south, which 
would be caught by, and retained in, the coating of vegetation. 
A peculiarity in the stratification at the east side of the pit will 
be dealt with when discussing supposed entrance passages. 
In the pit at a depth of 7 feet were encountered the tops of 
spongy, much-decayed logs of round timber more or less verti- 
cally placed. Down to this depth in the digging the soil taken 
