258 REPORTS ON THE STATE OP SCIENCE. 



The Lake Villages in the Neighbourhood of Glastonbury. — Report of tJie 

 Committee, consisting of Dr. R. Munro (Chairman), Professor W. 

 Boyd Dawkins (Secretary), Professor W. Ridgeway, and Messrs. 

 Arthur J. Evans, C. H. Read, H. Balpour, and A. Bulleid, 

 appointed to investigate the Lake Villages in the neighbourhood of 

 Glastonbury in connection with a Committee of the Somersetshire 

 Archaeological and Natural History Society. (Drawn up by Messrs. 

 Arthur Bulleid and H. St. George Gray, the Directors of the 

 Excavations.) 



The Committee report that the large and exhaustive monograph 

 describing the Glastonbury Lake Village is now approaching comple- 

 tion. The work will be issued privately by the Glastonbury Anti- 

 quarian Society, and will consist of two royal quarto volumes ; an illus- 

 trated prospectus has recently been circulated, and copies may be 

 obtained on application. Vol. I. will be published during the latter 

 part of this year, or in the early part of 1911. The work for Vol. II. 

 is also well in hand, and will be issued as soon as possible after Vol. I. 



The results of the tentative explorations in 1908 of the Lake Village 

 at Meare were of so important and encouraging a nature that the 

 matter was at once taken up by the Somersetshire Archaeological and 

 Natural History Society, 1 but owing to the large amount of work to 

 be accomplished for the publication of the monograph on the Glaston- 

 bury Lake Village, it was deemed advisable to postpone the further 

 examination of the Meare site until 1910. The first season's syste- 

 matic digging opened on May 23 and continued for three weeks, exclud- 

 ing the week devoted to filling in the area dug. Although it had been 

 previously arranged to dig for the short period mentioned, all further 

 work would, however, have been effectually stopped by heavy rain had 

 there been any intention of working for a longer period, for the River 

 Brue was overflowing and the adjoining fields were under water. 



The existence of this site has been known since 1895, but the exca- 

 vations at Glastonbury being then in progress no systematic examina- 

 tion was attempted until this year. With reference to the situation of 

 Meare, it may be of interest to those who are not acquainted with the 

 locality to give a brief description of it. 



The north-central part of Somerset lies between two nearly parallel 

 ranges of hills, the Mendips bordering it along the north-east, with the 

 Quantocks to the south-west. The district so enclosed has a coast-line 

 of some eighteen to twenty miles, and extends inland for the same 

 distance. It is chiefly occupied by low-lying tracts of peat land drained 

 by the Rivers Parret and Brue. Some time during its geological 

 history this locality was a shallow basin-shaped estuary open to the 

 Severn sea. At a later date the southern or inland portion was shut 

 off from the sea by the formation of beds of mud and sand, and con- 



1 The Society's sub-Committee consists of the Rev. E. H. Bates Harbin, Rev. 

 W. T. Reeder, Mr. Charles Tite, Mr. John Morland (Treasurer, Glastonbury), and 

 Messrs. Arthur Bulleid and H. St. George Gray (Joint Secretaries). 



