A STUDY ON BOCKLEY DYKE, AND OTHERS IN DORSET. 45 



tribes who inhabited this district, and constructed this earthwork* 

 In so doing I may be rather tedious, as it is necessary to go back 

 to primeval times, and to refer to the very alphabet of our 

 science. 



It is admitted that, at a very remote and 'unknown date, our 

 shores were thickly peopled by tribes who, having migrated 

 hither from Gaul, in time overspread the whole country. They 

 are regarded as the Brythonic branch of the great Keltic race > 

 to whom are attributed our round Barrows, and the entrench- 

 ments which crown some of our hills. In the second Century of 

 our sera, Ptolemy wrote of them and called some of them 

 Dourotriges distinguishing them clearly from the Dun- 

 monii, on the one hand and the Belgae, on the other. No doubt 

 they were very nearly allied to the latter people, without being 

 identical with them. These, according to Caesar, had passed 

 over from Gaul and settled on our South Eastern shores, whence 

 in time they extended, it is said, over Hants, Wilts, and a part 

 of Somerset. They were, perhaps, a later immigration than the 

 Keltse, though still of a very early date. Both Belgse and Kel- 

 tse were people of the Bronze Age. By a calculation I have 

 made from 160 tumuli in Mr. Warne's " Celtic Tumuli of Dor- 

 set" 9 per cent, of these were found to contain Bronze dagger- 

 blades ; whilst from Barrows opened by Sir R. C. Hoare around 

 Stonehenge, a much higher percentage of Bronze blades has been 

 calculated ; indeed it is said, "no other tumuli in England have 

 been so productive of bronze dagger.blades, as those of Wilt- 

 shire." * From these facts we infer that the Belgse of Wilts, 

 being of later date, were more advanced in culture and in the 

 knowledge of the use of Bronze than the Keltse, the Durotri- 

 ges, of the South West, in pre-Eomau times. This inference 

 receives also further proof from a comparison of the Tumuli ; 

 many of which in Dorset are very primitive ; the pottery found 

 in them being of the coarsest and most friable texture, and the 

 incinerated bones often deposited in a mere hole scooped out in 



* Mr. E. Stevens, Jottings, p. 136. 



