PROCEEDINGS OF THE COTTESWOLD CLUB 99 



worked flints beneath stalagmitic floors in caves, and 

 signs of man's handiwork buried beneath accumuUitions 

 of gravel To-day the chaotic mass has been reduced to 

 order, and ethnologists have from it written the story of 

 early men in Britain. When the Romans landed on our 

 shores they were opposed by natives who apparently for 

 a long time had used weapons and domestic articles made 

 of iron and bronze. The Cotteswold dwellers were a 

 Celtic tribe called the Boduni (Bo, to dwell ; dun, a hill 

 — literally, " hill-dwellers "). They belonged to the great 

 Celtic race which, in two swarms — the earlier the Goidelic, 

 the later the Brythonic — started from their home in the 

 East, swept across the southern part of the Continent, 

 seized upon land in Spain and Gaul, and then landed in 

 Britain. Their voice is no longer heard in the land ; but, 

 as Professor Rhys, author of " Celtic Britain," says, 

 " skulls are harder than consonants, and races lurk behind 

 when languages slink away ; " and in circular burial 

 mounds like those at Leckhampton, Crickley, Birdlip, and 

 elsewhere are the bones of the race which had occupied 

 Gloucestershire long before they had to bend to the stern 

 yoke of their Roman conquerers. But other burial 

 mounds tell of an earher race than the Celts. Tall, 

 square-built, muscular, not pleasant in face, were the 

 people whose skeletons are found in the circular-shaped 

 tumuli, and the shape of their burial places was very 

 nearly the shape of their heads. In the long " tumps," 

 on the other hand, barrows like those in West W^ood and 

 on Shurdington Hill, and, best preserved of all, that 

 which crowns the height of Uley Bury, we have the 

 remains of an Iberian race, short of stature, long in head, 

 and pleasant of countenance. Metal was to them 

 unknown, save that they may have recognised that bits of 

 stone with glistening grains or surface were particularly 

 useful, because heavy, when with sling and stone they 



