By Lt.-Gen. PiU-Rirers, T).C.l., F.R.S., F,S.A. 217 



its original position, a looped socketted spear-head was found, not 

 more than a foot from the surface. Nothing of iron was found in 

 the camp, except a spur and one or two cow's shoes, obviously 

 modern or mediaeval, quite on the surface. The presence of Bronze 

 Age pottery in the lower parts of the ditch, with a gradual accumu- 

 lation of Roman and Romano- British pottery higher up, appears to 

 be established. May not these bronze implements, on the 3ft. level, 

 have been dropped into the ditch, together with these fragments of 

 Roman pottery, at about the same time, viz., when the ditch had 

 only half silted up, the bronze implements having perhaps become 

 valueless on account of the recent introduction of iron ? 



We know how strenuously the older antiquaries, of whom Mr. 

 Thomas Wright was the representative, resisted the growing 

 evidence of a Bronze Age, and persisted in asserting that the bronze 

 implements were Roman. We know now sufficiently well that their 

 views were erroneous, but might not the facts on which they based 

 what we may perhaps term their obstinacy, now be accepted as 

 evidence, not of contemporaneity, but of the juxta-position of the 

 two periods of the arts, in certain places, and more particularly in 

 the remote south-west of England, where the culture coming from 

 the south and east, penetrated slowly. In the presence of large 

 forests and few roads, certain poor districts — and this was un- 

 doubtedly a poor district — must have been very isolated. The 

 vicinity of the copper and tin mines of the south-west, by facilitating 

 the fabrication of bronze weapons, may have led to their continuancQ 

 longer than elsewhere. In the tumuli close by, which were probably 

 the burial-places of the chiefs who inhabited this camp, Roman 

 pottery was found in the silting of their ditches, though not in the 

 body of the tumuli. In the midst of the Romano- British village 

 of Rotherley, not far off, described in Vol. II. " Excavations," PL 

 xcii., a Bronze Age intex'ment, associated with a Bronze Age 

 drinking-vessel, of the same quality, and having the same ornamen- 

 tation as some of the fragments found in this camp, was discovered 

 in the centre of the village, in the midst of Roman remains. I 

 attributed it to an earlier period, but how much earlier? — time and 

 further researches may probably show. At any rate, we must take 



