.14 BARROW-DIGGING AT MARTINSTOVN. 



mauls and deer-horn antlers * (picks) were used rather than 

 bronze celts and palstaves in the process of construction. Near 

 the bottom of the Angle Ditch on Handley Down, Dorset, 

 General Pitt-Rivers found the chalk sides of the ditch distinctly 

 scored with nearly vertical indentations, or " spud-marks," 

 which he suggested might have been caused by some kind of 

 spud or palstave being forced downwards. f The Angle Ditch 

 was proved to be of the Bronze Age, but, judging from the 

 nature of the relics discovered in it, it appears to be of 

 somewhat later Bronze Age date than the barrow under con- 

 sideration. 



Interments in the Barrow. The barrow, or rather that portion 

 of it which was excavated probably not more than one-tenth of 

 the whole structure produced two distinct interments. 



A little to the north of the centre of the main cutting, and on 

 the level of the old surface line, a nearly circular ring or wall of 

 large flints was discovered (indicated on the plan) ; greatest 

 diameter, 6 feet. Within this enclosure, at 26, and at a level of 

 i '3 foot above the old surface line, the flint fabricator, previously 

 described, was found. On the north-east of this enclosure, 

 jambed between two flints on the inner edge of the ring, and 

 at a depth of 10-3 feet from the surface of the barrow, a bronze 

 knife-dagger was discovered at the spot marked 280 on Plan and 

 Section, and Plate IV. It was, unfortunately, fractured near the 

 tip by the weight of the superincumbent material, and was coated 

 in parts by what at once appeared to be the remains of its wooden 

 sheath, in which perhaps the chief interest centres. It is of a 

 somewhat highly-developed form of knife-dagger, and of a type 

 not uncommonly found with interments of about the middle of 

 the Bronze period. In its present state it is 5$ inches in 

 length, being about 6J inches long in its original condition. It 



* See " Arbor Low Excavations " by H. St. G. Gray, Archaeologia, 

 Vol. LVIIL, pt. 2, p. 469. 



t Excavations in Cranborne Chase, Vol. IV., p. 104. This reference may 

 prove of value to archaeologists engaged in the re-excavation of ditches. 



