KIMMERIDGE COAL-MONEY. 



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we may, therefore, expect to find the survival of many customs 

 among the Britons which Roman influence could not eradicate. 

 Thus the kistvein is unusual for Roman interments, and the 

 occurrence of necklaces, beads of various substances, and the 

 placing of small earthen cups near the heads of the bodies 

 show the interments to be British : on the other hand the armillse, 

 beads or amulets, and other objects of Kimmeridge shale are 

 exclusively Eoman. In a large pasture between the village of 

 Kimmeridge and the Bay, Lieutenant E. Garard Smith, chief 

 officer of the Coastguard Station, found an oval-shaped kistvein, 

 the sides of which were composed of large sea-worn pebbles 

 plastered over, containing human remains, including the arms, 

 thigh-bones, lower jaw, and the upper portion of a skull, which 

 appeared to have been sawn through. A rough ring of Kimmeridge 

 shale was placed on each side of the skull ; there was no coal-money 

 within the kistvein nor near it, but outside there were bones 

 of various animals, among them the horn of a stag and a 

 quantity of limpet shells. In the same field he found quite a 

 magazine of coal-money, of which there were upwards of 500 

 pieces, square and three -holed type. On another occasion 

 he found a bronze fibula, with several pieces of pottery. 

 The frequency of coal-money scattered throughout the valley of 

 Kimmeridge has been already noticed. It has been found by the 

 sides of a small stream, Rope-lake, near Swalland Farmhouse, 

 between Smedmore and Encombe, and farther to the east at 

 Freshwater Steps, Encombe, and at Chapman's Pool. The late 

 Rev. J. H. Austen and the Kev. Nathaniel Bond examined a field 

 at Povington in 1856, in which they found pottery in abundance 

 and in one instance part of an amulet. Every dig of the spade 

 brought up two or three pieces of coal-money in excellent condition, 

 the edges were so sharply defined that they must have been covered 

 over very shortly after they had been detached from the lathe. 

 The coal-money here was scattered about as indiscriminately as at 

 Tyneham, but there were more pieces of unwrought Kimmeridge 

 shale and broken amulets. These must have been brought from 



