182 ANCIENT BRITISH URNS. 



Our earliest civilisation has come to us from the East. If 

 so, in the natural course of events the "Wiltshire Plains would 

 receive the earlier beams of that civilisation which, gleaming from 

 the Dover Cliffs and the shores of Kent, made its way along the 

 course of the Thames, and through the Wilds of Andred to emerge 

 with clearer effulgence on the Plains of Wiltshire. Without 

 pursuing the metaphor, we may imagine that the Belgse, a 

 commercial, if not a warlike people, would prove themselves 

 to be the pioneers of the Bronze Age, and thus these incursions 

 would gradually supersede old customs and habits, and intro- 

 duce new methods of art, in clay as well as metal. Thus I 

 can conceive that the Bronze Age established its footing in Wilts 

 before it settled itself in Dorset ; consequently old habits, old 

 customs, and modes of thought continued longer amongst the 

 Celtic race of Dorset. To assign a date to the period when these 

 changes began is beyond our power, but we shall not be far wrong 

 if we carry them back several centuries before the Roman Invasion. 

 Stonehenge is unquestionably a monument of the Bronze Age ; 

 Abury of the Stone Age. It is a fact that Bronze Weapons, the 

 elaborately ornamented Drinking Cups of fine texture, and the 

 Incense Cups, as they are called, are all more frequently found in 

 the Tumuli of Wilts than of Dorset, pointing to the higher 

 generalisation that the Bronze Age was established in our neighbour 

 county before it revolutionised Dorset. 



Now, to return to the Deverel Barrow. Of the nineteen or twenty 

 urns which are given by Mr. Miles, ten of these are of the globular 

 form ; all of them embellished with bands of linear indent, and 

 some with the Vandyke or chevron pattern also, round the upper 

 part or neck of the urn. They have many of them perforated ears 

 or loops to admit a thong or twisted vegetable fibres for suspension. 

 This globular shaped vessel is by no means uncommon. Thus in 

 Plate 2, Celtic Turn., there are two of this kind shown from 

 barrows on the Ridgeway and Came, each ornamented with the 

 usual circular and zig-zag lines. In PI. 3, Pokes well, two of this 

 description ; in PI. 6, two more from Whitchurch. At Plush in 



