214 Excavations at Avebury. . 
its mighty sides: but now we prepared for a thorough examination 
of its materials, and to this end having already sufficiently ex- 
amined the southern end, we selected the W.N.W. side of the gap, 
behind Mr. Kemm’s rick-yard, in a field called “ Barclose,’’? where 
the mound is thickly planted with trees, and near the locality 
where quantities of animal bones had once been found.!. Here we 
made a considerable opening, cutting our trench or tunnel many 
yards into the centre, and at such an incline downwards that we 
reached at length the original level of the ground, which proved 
to be a stiff clay soil of a deep red colour.2, (We subsequently ex- 
amined the soil of the meadow adjoining, and at about two feet 
below the turf found it to be of a similar clay, though in that spot 
scarcely so stiff.) This excavation occupied our labourers the 
greater part of two days, but it proved wholly unremunerative, as 
we disinterred nothing but the chalky rubble of which the whole 
of the mound was made; not a bone, not a fragment of pottery, 
nor even of sarsen. 
REsULts. 
Our workmen had now been carrying on the excavations for a 
week, and we had examined all the spots of special interest, so that 
it was time to bring our labours to a close: but it was with no 
little reluctance we gave directions to desist, and fill in all the holes © 
and trenches we had made. For although we had found no hidden 
treasures, and made no fresh discoveries, the result of our work 
was on the whole highly satisfactory to us: for we considered we had 
fairly settled the question mooted by Mr. Fergusson, but which 
neither of us ever entertained for one moment, that Avebury was 
a vast grave-yard, and that human bones would be disinterred, if 
search were made. 
We had made excavations in fourteen different spots within the 
area, some of them of no trifling dimensions, but not one single 
human bone had we found: quantities of bones of the sheep, the 
horse, the ox, we had disinterred, many of which, not far from 
pe eee 

1Stukeley’s Abury, p. 27. 
? This clay is probably ‘‘loess,”’ or a local drift, 
om 


