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after which he compared Hollingbury with Bronze Age camps of 
Wilts and Dorset in order to disprove the belief that Hollinghury 
was of Roman origin. Like Hollingbury these Wilts and Dorset 
camps were thought to be Roman because of their rectangular 
shape, but the excavations which he (Mr. Toms) had the honour 
of personally conducting at those camps conclusively proved 
them to be the work of the Bronze Age. Passing on, Mr. Toms, 
with the aid of several diagrams, proceeded to show that Holling- 
bury owed its present aspect to the action of the weather, which 
caused the sides of the trench and rampart to fall into the trench, 
the bottom of which would very soon be covered with chalk 
rubble, and the sides partly so. Then a finer mixture, washed 
and drifted into the trench, would accumulate, and over all turf 
would grow, and mould accumulate by vegetable decay, the 
tendency of all this being ever in the direction of softening and 
reducing the outlines of the earthwork, and eventually almost 
their obliteration. : 
Coming to the question of how to determine the age of a 
camp, he showed that this could be done by careful excavation 
and analysis of the deposit with which the trench had become 
filled during the lapse of ages. Relics in the bottom of the trench 
or in the body of the rampart would obviously belong to the pe-iod 
of the first construction of the entrenchment, and the objects 
found would naturally be of more and more recent date in the 
later and latest deposits. The relics in the trench would, in fact, 
be found to be arranged, so to speak, in chronological order. 
Dealing next with the best method of excavation by means of 
which to determine the age of Hollingbury, he shewed the import- 
ance of first preparing a carefully contoured plan, and then 
pointed out the right and wrong ways of excavating sections of 
the earthworks. The proper way was to take the turf off first, 
and then work down layer by layer, removing and recording the 
depth and position of the pottery, &c., found in the upper layers 
before digging into the lower layers. If necessary, the whole of 
the ditch and rampart should be explored in a similar manner, 
and after the earthworks had been explored, the interior area of 
the camp should be similarly trenched for traces of occupation. 
As the evidence bearing upon Hollingbury’s age still lay hidden 
beneath the soil, they could only conjecture the nature of the 
objects forming the clue; but from a comparison of the results of 
excavations made elsewhere, they might safely say that this ques- 
tion would be mainly solved by the shards of broken pottery 
invariably found in great numbers in earthworks of this kind, 
Pottery alone, however, was not a safe criterion by which to 
determine the age of an earthwork. Other evidence, however 
slight, of the metallic or non-metallic periods was required tc 
confirm the conclusion to which the pottery pointed. Finishing 
