By Maud E. Citnnington. 417 



doubly unfortunate that it is unknown whether the likeness in 

 the corresponding entrances is carried out in detail.^ The features 

 of the entrance discovered at Oliver's Camp may be as character- 

 istic of one type of camp, and of one race and period, as certain 

 well-known types of pottery and styles of ornament are charac- 

 teristic of the period in which they were made. 



Thus it is not possible at present to draw much inference as to 

 date from the structural features of camps, and the character of 

 the relics are at present necessarily almost the only clue to their 

 age, and it is probably by the character of the relics which are to 

 be found in association with typical sites that some day their 

 classification with regard to age will become possible. 



General Pitt-Kivers has said that the chances of finding objects 

 of rarity in the body of a rampart are very remote' ; he might 

 well have added that the chance of finding any relics at all is not 

 great. For this reason the evidence gathered from a single site 

 must often be inconclusive, and it is only an accumulation of 

 corroborative evidence from many sites which can lead eventually 

 to clear and certain results. 



Meanwhile it is necessary, of course, to weigh the evidence of 

 each site independently, and to try to arrive at some conclusion 

 on its merits alone. It is right, therefore, even at the risk of some 

 day being proved wrong, to state the conclusions to which we have 

 come as a result of the work at Oliver's Camp, and as far as possible 

 the reasons on which these conclusions are based. 



Briefly stated they are as follows. Nothing that can be recog- 

 nised as Eoman was found in the ramparts, in the lower silting of 

 the ditches, or in any of the deeper excavations. It is true that 

 a small piece of Samian ware was found eighteen inches below the 

 crest of the rampart, at Section A, but the value of this discovery 

 was negatived by the finding of a modern guinea weight just one 



' The entrance into the inner enclosure at Winkelbury is in the centre of 

 the rampart in a position corresponding to that of the main entrance at 

 Oliver's Camp. 



2 Vol. III., p. ix. 



