Prehistoric ArcJiaeology of Cambridgeshire 249 



from great distances, and not improbably the objects them- 

 selves were articles of barter and commerce, and this may not 

 inconceivably have had a Scandinavian origin. A few in- 

 stances of perforated polished axe-heads occur. 



Objects of later date are the bronze swords and spear- 

 heads which have occurred at Barrington, and are now ex- 

 hibited in the Antiquarian Museum ; these with various 

 objects described as personal ornaments have been obtained 

 from settlements of Anglo-Saxon age at Barrington (cf. the 

 Walter Foster Collection), and near St John's College. The 

 two bronze shields found at Coveney Fen in 1846 are 

 probably of earlier date and of British origin. In the same 

 connection, mention is to be made of the remarkably rich col- 

 lection of cinerary urns of the British period which are so 

 well exhibited in the cases of the Museum, and the unique 

 series of pottery of Roman and Saxon antiquity which have been 

 exhaustively described by Messrs Jenkinson and von Hiigel. 

 As has been so often incidentally mentioned, finds of Roman 

 ware and of the allied Romano-British pottery constitute a 

 very large part, if not the majority, of the total of discoveries. 

 At Horningsea, five miles below Cambridge, on the Cam, are 

 visible traces of a Romano-British settlement particularly pro- 

 ductive of the coarser kinds of ware, and such settlements are 

 numerous throughout the county. 



From the objects we now turn to the makers, and consider 

 the evidence available as to the characters of the early popu- 

 lations of Cambridgeshire. It may be stated at the outset 

 that there are no human remains possessing any evident title 

 to be attributed to the palaeolithic period, and indeed the same 

 may be said as regards the neolithic period as well, unless we 

 regard the long-headed, short-statured British population as 

 lingering representatives of the neolithic man of the locality. 

 The custom of cremation has further reduced the number of 

 examples to a comparatively small figure. Besides this it is 

 remarkable that very few remains have been collected besides 

 the skull : the long bones are usually not preserved with such 



