114 INTRODUCTION. 



of the people of the wolds is very strongly corroborated by the much 

 more extensive series of facts which have been brought to light by 

 an examination of the Swiss Lake Dwellings. The two peoples appear 

 to have been in much the same state of civilisation, especially if we 

 have regard to those stations in Switzerland where the inhabitants 

 had only just passed from the stone age to a knowledge of bronze. 

 Both were possessed of domesticated animals, both cultivated grain, 

 manufactured cloth and pottery, but without the aid of the wheel, 

 and used implements of flint and other stone as well as of deer's- 

 horn, all in each country very similar in their character. 



It seems quite certain that grain of some description was culti- 

 vated by the dwellers on the wolds, and it is probable that other 

 vegetables were used by them. Terraces of a peculiar construction 

 are found throughout large and various districts of Britain. They 

 still remain in some parts of the wolds, as for instance near 

 Carnaby, though modern cultivation has in most cases destroyed 

 all traces of them. They are abundantly distributed over other 

 districts, as will be found more fully noticed in the sequel. These 

 terraces have been considered by many persons, and I think with 

 every probability, to be the places upon which some cereal crop 

 was grown under a system of agriculture not quite intelligible to 

 us. Some of these terraces, however, belong to a much later period, 

 and are to be referred to the way in which the land in the common 

 field of the village, where there was no division by a fence, was 

 ploughed. But the proof that these people cultivated grain does 

 not depend upon this alone. There is more conclusive evidence of 

 it afforded by the stones found in such abundance, and which seem 

 to have been used for bruising corn or some like seed 1 . They have 

 been met with not only on the surface of the ground, but in several 

 instances in the barrows. It is not always easy to distinguish be- 

 tween stones which have been used as hammers and for taking the 

 larger flakes of flint from the block, and those which have been 

 employed in bruising or grinding grain. Some, however, show 

 signs of wear of such a nature as could not have been produced 

 by hammering, but just such as would accrue from a process of 

 rubbing. The specimen figured here [fig. 93], belonging to the 

 class of rubbers, has been very ingeniously fitted for its work. The 

 stone is rather unwieldy, and to make it the better adapted for being 

 held securely in the hand, a groove has been cut on one side, in 



1 It is possible, however, that these ridged stones may have been used for bruising 

 roots or for mashing bones. See Evans, Stone Impl., pp. 221 seqq. 



