214 Excavation of the South Lodge Camp, IRushmore Park. 



been deposited there at the time the rampart was formed ; so that the 

 " gisemeni " of the pottery corroborates entirely the evidence afforded 

 by the position of the bronze and other relics^ and shows that the 

 first construction of the camp was in the Bronze Age, and that a 

 time arrived^ after the ditch had silted up to about 3ft., with 

 material consisting entirely of chalk rubble, when mould began to 

 be deposited, and then pottery of the Roman Age began to appear, 

 and increased in quantity until the ditch had been completely filled 

 np. We have, in this, a complete exposition of the value of the 

 evidence afforded by pottery when the position of every fragment 

 is carefully recorded. Of the sixty-nine fragments of pottery of 

 the Roman Age found throughout the camp, only a small proportion, 

 amounting to ten fragments, was actually of Roman construction, 

 and of the kind known to have been fabricated in the New Forest, 

 including also a few fragments of red Samian. The rest was of a 

 quality which I have determined in my investigations in Romano- 

 British villages to be Romano-British, of a kind probably fabricated 

 in the kilns at Bagber. Its " gisement" in this camp, proves the 

 correctness of my classification, made in the other villages. It is 

 of a quality that is quite distinct from any of the true British kinds, 

 and my assistants and myself found no difficulty in recognising each 

 piece of it as soon as it was found and washed. Whether the sixty- 

 nine fragments of pottery of the Roman Age, out of the total 

 number of one thousand five hundred and ninety-one found in all the 

 camp, is sufficient to denote Roman occupation of the camp, is 

 questionable. This neighbourhood was so thickly inhabited in Roman 

 times, as proved by my previous excavations, that a camp formed by 

 their immediate predecessors must frequently have been visited, even 

 if it were not occupied, by the Romanised Britons, and thus pottery 

 may have been broken in the place without their actually occupying 

 it as a residence, but this does not in any way affect my argument 

 as to the period of such fragments as were found in the camp, for 

 pottery could only be found in places to which it had access at the 

 time it was broken and thrown down. Roman pottery could not 

 possibly be found in the bottom of the ditch with the British pottery, 

 unless the silting had been disturbed. The pottery found in surface 



