250 On the Ancient Earthwork Enclosures 



protect a temporary or more permanent camp. Still the majority 

 of them from their size and position forbid us to ascribe to them 

 such an object, and we are glad to fall back on the theory of the 

 cattle pen as the most plausible solution to the diiEculty. More- 

 over we know that like other nomadic and little civilized people, 

 the early Britons' chief occupation was centred in tending their 

 flocks and their herds. Caesar tells us that in his time their cattle 

 was very numerous, " pecorum magnus numerus " [Bell. Gall, 

 v., 12, 14] ; and it is obvious that in pasturing them on the downs 

 those early shepherds must have required some sort of pens wherein 

 to fold them in safety, and so prevent them from wandering by 

 night far away from home, and not improbably into the territory 

 of a hostile or predatory tribe. Now what kind of enclosure easily 

 made with material ready to their hand, and that in a district 

 where neither building stone nor wood abounded, would at once 

 suggest itself to the mind of the British herdsman and shepherd ? 

 Obviously a bank and a ditch, an earthwork of the required size 

 and shape. This was the only kind of building they knew, but at 

 this sort of work they were skilful and practised craftsmen. Wit- 

 ness the camps, the barrows, the trackways, the hollow roads, the 

 pithouses, all of which testify to the readiness with which the early 

 excavators executed the earthworks which were to serve such varied 

 purposes. And so, without attempting to speak decidedly, on a 

 question which cannot be proved, I think it most probable that the 

 majority of these earthen enclosures were the cattle pens of the 

 early Britons, who (as I have elsewhere shewn) inhabited the 

 downs, when the vallies and lower plains were covered with forest 

 and morass. 



There is one more point I would just mention which has fre- 

 quently struck me in connection with these earthworks, and which 

 I do not think has ever been touched on by others : and that is, 

 that they appear to me to abound in the immediate neighbourhood 

 of "Wansdyke, to the north of that mighty boundary, more than in 

 any other locality. Indeed any one riding along the principal 

 portion that remains of that noble boundary from "Westwoods to 

 Blackland Hollow, will observe a whole chain of these enclosures 



