Oo7 
ON THE AGE OF STONE CIRCLES, 279 
(d) Cutting III.—The E. margin of Cutting III was only 6 feet W. of 
the middle of the western hedge bounding the modern road into Avebury 
from the south. A length of 14 feet of fosse was marked off for examina- 
tion. It was close to the gate of the high road, and was dug to ascertain 
if the fosse rounded off to form a solid entrance-causeway. 
Both Aubrey and Stukeley apparently show the position of the Kennet 
Avenue entrance into Avebury as being exactly on the site of the present 
road, and this fact rather led one to suppose that the fosse of the W. side 
of the solid entrance-causeway must have terminated in about the position 
of the present western hedge. But our excavation into the fosse of 
Cutting III proved that their plans are incorrect and misleading. 
In 1909 (B.A. Report, p. 410) we made several trial holes to 
ascertain the direction towards the east taken by the upper margins of 
the walls of the fosse exposed in Cutting II. Holes were made along 
both margins, and in all those nearest to Cutting II the solid chalk 
. upper border of the fosse-wall was revealed; but instead of the fosse 
narrowing it widened as it approached the hedge and road. 
This year before re-excavating a part of Cutting III we dug a trench 
about 32 feet long and 5 feet wide, connecting the northern face of 
Cutting II with the northern face of Cutting III, and clearly exposed 
the upper walls of the fosse. On the top of the solid chalk ‘ wall’ in the 
N.N.E. corner of Cutting II a slight platform was observed. It was 
found on excavation to continue a little towards the north, but judging 
(1) from the apparent hollows in the turf-clad inner bank for some little 
distance round, and (2) the fact that modern shards were found down 
to the solid chalk, it appeared evident that a recent excavation had been 
made here, perhaps for chalk, as in the much larger mutilation in the 
vallum opposite on the south. 
Having re-excavated Cutting III to a considerable depth we felt bound 
to complete the northern portion of it to the bottom, which the fine 
weather permitted us to do, but, as we shall see presently, we proved the 
existence and position of the ancient entrance-way on the E. side of the 
modern road. 
It soon became clear in digging Cutting III that the fosse approaching 
the causeway from the west not only maintained its great depth, but 
expanded considerably towards the point where it rounded off to form the 
causeway under what is now the high road into Avebury. (This will be 
clearly shown in the plan to be reproduced hereafter.) 
The top margin of the fosse in Cutting III proved to be 52 feet wide, 
and the whole of the filling to a depth of 5 feet was removed. This pro- 
duced no object of importance and consisted entirely of silt from the 
hedge and road and a loamy tenacious material said by the local people 
. to have been brought to this spot from the site of the ‘ New Bridge ’ across 
the Kennet stream on the Devizes road, a quarter of a mile S.W. of our 
diggings, when it was built. It entailed much manual work ta remove 
this ‘ dumped ’ material, but afterwards we came upon the same ancient 
deposits as occurred in Cuttings I and II, making ‘ finds ’ of pottery and 
a well-worn flint scraper (No. 140), described below. \ 
At length we reached the bottom at a depth of 23 feet from the surface, 
but nothing was found in the lowest depths but a scapula of sheep at 
18 feet ; and no remains actually on the smooth floor of the fosse, which 
was exposed for a width of 8 feet and a length averaging 3°8 feet. In no 
part of the excavations could one realise better the immensity of the 
