27 



The dotted patterns on many of the drinking vessels for 

 instance appear to have been produced with a small piece of wood 

 or bone. In ornamenting many of the larger cinerary urns, 

 however, the point of the finger or thumb was used to make the 

 required dots of indentation ; and the study of this latter method 

 led Dr. Thurnam to an interesting supposition. He states :— 

 " So far as I have been able to compare the size of the digita- 

 tions, they point to the inference that the makers of our British 

 fictilia, like the potters of the existing American and African 

 tribes, and lately even the Hebrides, were of the female sex." 



The patterns in straight and curved lines are, as a rule, 

 indented or incised, presumably with a pointed stick or bone, or 

 by the impress of a twisted string of fibre or sinew. 



Sun-Drying or Sun-Baking. — The early archseologists 

 expressed a view that many of the rude vessels of this period 

 which have come down to us were baked or dried simply by 

 exposure to the rays of the sun ; but such a view is utterly 

 fallacious, for the experience of the -modern potter shows that a 

 temperature far in excess of our extreme summer heat is necessary 

 to convert clay into pottery or terra-cotta, and so produce that 

 chemical change in the clay which renders it, as pottery, the most 

 durable of all manufactured substances. 



Presuming the sun-drying process to have obtained among 

 the Bronze Age Britons, then the percolation of water through the 

 burial mounds would have resolved all such sun-dried specimens 

 into their original clayey state, and this, combined with the 

 varying temperature and other causes during the lapse of the 

 intervening years, would have sufficed to crumble them to pieces, 

 and none would have figured in our public and private collections 

 to bear witness of the potter's art of these far-off times. 



Camps. — Few perfect examples of Bronze Age pottery other 

 than those associated with the interments of this period have been 

 discovered ; and the archaeologist owes much to the interesting 

 modes of sepulture of our prehistoric Celtic ancestors. 



The entrenchments or fortified camps and the villages of the 

 bronze-using Britons have, as yet, received scant attention in the 

 way of methodical research. To my knowledge three only of 

 these have been thoroughly investigated. These, all of the 

 rectangular form, and situated in North Dorset, were excavated by 

 the late General Pitt-Rivers. Previously to the excavation of these 

 rectangular earth works the view held with regard to their age 

 was that they were constructed during the period of the Roman 

 occupation ; and I remember having seen this opinion stated in 

 more than one local publication with reference to Hollingbury 

 Camp, which is rectangular, and I believe the majority of 

 Brijjhtonians, who are aware of its existence, still tenaciously hold 

 to this opinion. For my own part I do not imagine I am too 

 sanguine in anticipating that an investigation of this camp, and 



