280 Notes on the Opening of a Tumulus on 



noticed In my introduction as never failing proofs of ancient population. There 

 he found three Roman coins (small brass Constantine, Gratian, and one illegible), 

 fragments of stuccoed walls painted crimson and green, and a gi-eat deal of 

 pottery of various sorts, with an ivory pin ; the adjoining barrow had been 

 opened before as he found pieces of an urn, burnt bones, and a pin or bodkin of 

 bone, mixed indiscriminately with the soil." 



After these apparently unprofitable excavations of Mr. Cunning- 

 ton's, further researches were left to a colony of i-abbits, who had 

 occupied the mound in force, and for many years had been engaged 

 in diligently excavating it, with the result that so many objects of 

 one sort and another were thrown out of their burrows from time 

 to time that in 1892 Mr. William Stratton, of Kingston Deverill — 

 in whose occupation the land is — determined to open the mound 

 again. This was accordingly done, and a trench was cut through 

 it from south-west to north-east down to the level of the original 

 chalk. A good deal of broken pottery, a quantity of animal bones, 

 and several bone implements, as well as the spoon and the bit of 

 coral, were found at this time, but the whole contents of the mound 

 seemed to be disturbed and mixed up together. 



In September, 1893, Mr. Stratton asked me to come to Kingston 

 Deverill and assist at further diggings in the mound to see whether 

 anything more could be discovered. Accordingly a party of labourers 

 were set to work to cut a trench at right angles to the one dug in 

 1892 — that is, roughly, from south-east to north-west. 



The tumulus itself is a low spreading shapeless mound covering 

 a large space of ground, its greatest height in the centre being 5ft. 

 to the level of the chalk ; its diameter from south-west to north-east 

 about 27yds., and that from south-east to north-west 38yds. 



Doubtless the continual burrowing of the rabbits, and the digging 

 of the men who ferret them, as well as the previous openings, had 

 done much to increase this shapeless spreading of the mound. 



All round, for 50yds. or more in every direction, there are de- 

 pressions in the ground, some of them circular, but the majority of 

 them of irregular shape. These are evidently the sites of ancient 

 habitations, I could not, however, find any traces on the surface, 

 of surrounding ditches or works of defence. One or two of these 

 depressions were dug into. In one seventy-four paces to the west 



