n 



women in making the pots I have here, only a little more care has 

 been given to the ornamentation. 



And here Professor Mitchell administers a caution to archaeolo- 

 gists, which I will tell you. This woman at Barras lived ma 

 wretched hut, much such as the prehistoric Bntons hved m She 

 had in it cottons from Manchester, crockery from Staffordshire, 

 cutlery from Shefheld, sugar from the West Indies, tea from 

 China, and tobacco from Virginia, yet she used craggans, and a 

 quern, and spun wool with a wooden spindle on which was a 

 stone whorl. Now if you were to bury her, house and all, and 

 dig her up in a century or two, the cottons, the cutlery, the sugar, 

 the tea, and the tobacco, would have disappeared. Her bones, 

 her spindle whorl, her quern, and her craggans would alone remain, 

 and some of the Staffordshire crockery; the antiquary who dug 

 her up would certainly conclude she was a prehistoric Bnton, and 

 would say the Staffordshire potsherds were a later deposit. Yet 

 she was living in 1863. 



The Romano-British. 

 ThePctier^ Wheel-l now come to the second of the great 

 divisions which I mentioned to you-the Romano-British. 



Vast quantities of pottery, unquestionably the production of the 

 Roman period of British history, are continually found in all parts 

 of the kingdom. Numerous potteries existed, some, as at Upchurch 

 on the Medway, of very large extent ; the very kilns in which the 

 ware was manufactured, have also been discovered in many places, 

 and it is certain that a large proportion of the fictile works used in 

 this country were also made in it; and that an export trade m 

 I them existed with Gaul. 



^ The pottery of this period differs in every respect-in shape, m 



ornamentatwn, and in paste, from that of the preceding period. 

 The Romano-British potters knew also the use of the potters 

 wheel, which was unknown in the British period. I am unable 

 to tell you anything of the history of the patterns wheel. Its 

 Its invention goes back into remote antiquity; I think I have seen 

 k on the walls of some of the tombs at Thebes. The Egyptians 



