ON OTTERY EAST HILL. 125 



use of bronze and then to that of iron. On the concluding 

 swells of this East Hill towards Honiton, tumuli may be seen 

 in which remnants of these buried civilisations yet sleep. In- 

 deed, few districts in England are richer in pre-historic antiqui- 

 ties than the one on which we stand. Walking eastward, we 

 look into a series of fertile " combes " bending towards the sea, 

 and on the high table-land which breaks down into these wooded 

 valleys may be noticed many small mounds crowned with trees. 

 We know that the natives of the Bronze Age were wont to bury 

 their dead on lofty hills, and these tumuli have been con- 

 clusively proved by the late Mr. Kirwan's researches to have 

 been places of sepulture, and probably to have belonged to that 

 epoch. The record of his investigations is very interesting.* In 

 1868 he opened three of these funeral mounds with the utmost 

 care. They were about ninety feet in diameter and eight or 

 nine feet in height, of a conical shape. On the original level 

 of the ground was found a deposit of charcoal enclosed in a 

 circle of large boulders in one case. Then came a layer of 

 calcined bones, and above them clay and burnt earth ; in one 

 case a cairn of flints was built over them, and then the surface 

 earth had been piled over all. Cremation was the mode by 

 which these dead persons had been disposed of. Each of the 

 three tumuli also contained treasures of great worth in the eyes 

 of an archaeologist ; not, indeed, the "crocks of gold " which the 

 couniry people believe are concealed in them, but infinitely 

 more valuable articles, judging them by their scientific interest. 

 In the first tumulus was discovered a cup some three and a 

 half inches high and three inches wide, of a bell-shaped pattern 

 tapering downwards to a cone. It would hold about a gill. 

 Its ornamentation is extremely simple and in admirable taste, 

 consisting externally of four series of rings, while the inner margin 

 of the rim is indented with two parallel chevrony zigzags that 



* See Transactions of the Devonshire Association for the Advancement of 

 Science aud Art. 



