SECTIONAL TRANSACTIONS.—H. 341 
Roman coins found in Islands Thorns indicate that it was occupied by potters 
who worked in the latter half of the fourth century a.p. 
A high standard of gypsy comfort is suggested by this hut plan—not Romanisation. 
Yet its occupants produced ware in persistent imitation of Roman pottery and of 
Samian forms, with fading tradition of British ornament. 
AFTERNOON. 
5. Mr. [an A. Ricumonp.—Roman Camps at Cawthorn, near Pickering, 
N. Riding, Yorks. 
Two periods of occupation are so far certain. 
1. In the first was built a six-acre camp, A, with a narrow gateway on each side, 
but within the N.E. and §.H. angles were mounds for artillery. Conditions in the 
ditches prove that this occupation was short. 
2. The second occupation added a 54-acre camp, B, to A’s eastern side, which 
was protected by low turf ramparts and by a ditch (E. side). The five gateways, 
three of A and two (N. and 8.) of B, were provided with internal and external lunate 
mounds of defence (Hyginus’s clavicule), but no gates, and the ditch was either 
interrupted (B) or filled up (A) in front of them. On the E. side, and at the N.-E., 
were turf-built mounds for artillery. Internally there are slight road-ways and build- 
ings (including barracks and a tribunal), made of turf, aligned to the roads, and 
apparently containing pits and fire-places. Between the rampart and the road 
behind it were stone-built ovens, provided with stoke-holes, and, in one case at least, 
with a shelter supported by slud posts. Three other ovens were found in like position, 
but excavated in, and built of, imported clay. Contemporary with B was camp C, 
a six-acre, coffin-shaped camp, with three east gates only, defended by external 
clavicule, and having turf buildings. Overlying the S.-W. end of C was a three-acre 
fort, D, apparently never finished, but closely resembling the Roman camp in Hod 
Hill fort. 
Finds have been very few and valueless for dating within the Roman period. The 
type of fortification makes it legitimate to assign the earthworks to the period of 
Roman conquest in Yorkshire, perhaps to Cerialis or Agricola, or both. It is clear 
that we are about to learn something of a new kind of Roman fortification, bridging 
the gap between the tent-covered marching-camps of Scotland and the siege-camps, 
crowded with temporary buildings, as at Masada (Arabia) and Castillejo, Pena 
Redonda, or Renieblas (Numantia, Spain). 
6. Mr. Donatp Atxtnson.—Recent Excavations at Wroxeter and the 
History of Viroconium. 
Friday, August 28. 
Mornine. 
7. Hon. Prof. Sir W. Boyp Dawk1ns.—The Antiquity of Man. 
The first appearance of man on the earth has excited curiosity from the earliest 
times, and efforts have been made to fix a date in terms of years by the historians 
and the students of prehistoric archeology and of geology. For the period outside 
history, archeologists have divided the development of civilisation into three main 
stages, characterised by the use of polished stone, bronze and iron, and they have 
carried their inquiry further back into a region which belongs more especially to the 
geologists—the Pleistocene Age—and have made efforts more or less futile to measure 
the antiquity of man by the historic unit of time. 
The Historic Period begins at different times in different countries. It is clear that 
there is no hard and fast boundary between history and prehistory, and that the one 
overlaps the other in various regions, in some of which civilisation can be traced back 
to the Neolithic Age. 
In prehistoric archzology it is only possible to fix a date in a given area by discovery 
in that area of objects which are dated elsewhere. For example, the approximate date 
of some of the burial mounds of the Bronze Age near Stonehenge can be fixed by the 
discovery in them of Egyptian beads that belong to the time of Akhnaton (1360 B.c.). 
This gives us the only clue to the date of the noblest of our megalithic monuments. 
