284 Inaugural Address by the President of the Society, 
water, showing that the water-line must have lain somewhat higher 
in the hill in former days than is the case at present. 
Woodcuts, or rather a portion of it, was surrounded by an en- 
trenchment of slight relief, the ditch of which drained into the road 
drain, above-mentioned; and at Rotherley a portion of the village 
was separated from the rest by a-circular surrounding ditch, similar 
to others which have been several times noticed in British villages 
elsewhere, and which have been rather rashly assumed to be sacred 
circles, but no confirmation of this was produced by the excavations 
—the circle, on the contrary, appeared to have been occupied in the 
- Same manner as the rest of the village. In Woodcuts three hypo- 
causts of T-shaped plan were found, which were probably British 
imitations of Roman ‘hypocausts for warming rooms by flues beneath 
the floors. This, at least, is the most probable use to which they 
can be assigned. A precisely similar one will afterwards be spoken 
of at Woodyates. The houses must have been built of dab-and-wattle, 
and, ‘by means of some of ‘the fragments of plaster, which had been 
hardened by fire, and upon which the impression of the twigs had 
been preserved, it was possible to ascertain the exact thickness of 
the walls and the construction of the wattle-work, Timber was 
also used in the construction of the houses, as appears probable from 
the large number of iron nails, of a size suitable for fastening beams 
of wood, and also from a number of cramps of the kind now used for 
fastening timber together. Besides the dab-and-wattle-work houses, 
which were probably round, some other houses must have been made 
with flat sides, plastered and painted. These better class of houses 
were peculiar to one quarter in Woodcuts, which from the quality 
of the other objects found in it appears likely to have been a rich 
quarter. The pits were probably used to contain refuse, and after 
being filled up to the top were subsequently used for the interment 
of the dead. The dead were not interred in these pits only, but 
also in the drains, after they had been filled up to the top with earth, 
a practice which, if not confined to this district, has, at any rate, 
not been found elsewhere to such an extent as to lead to the inference 
that it was a widely-spread British custom. It was a custom that 
is highly favourable to anthropological research, as the skeletons 
