SECTIONAL TRANSACTIONS.— H. 365 



that in the pre-Roman period Isurium was the centre of native government 

 in the district. 



(b) Was there any kind of British occupation ? The evidence is against 

 this. Few British objects have been found on the site of York. No certain 

 British interment has been discovered. The British name underlying 

 the Roman form ' Eburacum ' is a descriptive name and not the name of 

 a settlement. The geographical evidence points to there being a river- 

 crossing on the site of York in pre-Roman times ; indeed, here was the only 

 possible crossing-place for a great distance to the north or south of York. 

 There is known to have been a British trackway leading to the river. If the 

 site of York was a tribal crossing-place, it affords a cogent reason why the 

 Romans chose the site for a legionary fortress. 



Mr. I. A. Richmond. — Recent discoveries at Birdoswald, Hadrian's Wall. 



Since 1927 excavations at Birdoswald (Camboglanna) by Mr. F. G. 

 Simpson, M.A., Hon. F.S.A. Scot., and the writer have been devoted to 

 studying the sequence of the three frontier works of Roman date that 

 approach one another at this point and are overlaid by the milliary cohort- 

 fort which was laid out in connection with the last of them, Hadrian's Stone 

 Wall. The first procedure was accurately to define the periods of occupa- 

 tion of the Stone Wall fort. These proved to be four, running from 

 c. A.D. 124 to c. A.D. 196, from c. a.d. 208 to 297, from c. a.d. 297 to 368, and 

 from c. A.D. 368 to 383, the second and third being defined by epigraphic 

 evidence, the others by numismatics. The stratified pottery related to 

 these periods now forms a firm basis for dating elsewhere. 



Below the Stone Wall fort, excavation has now revealed three occupations. 

 The earliest preceded the Vallum and was destroyed by it. The second, 

 a small fort of Trajanic type, is contemporary with the Vallum and goes 

 typologically with the forts of the Stanegate. The third overlies the 

 demolished Vallum and is in turn cut through by the ditch-system of the 

 Stone Wall fort : it should therefore be the fort going with the Turf Wall. 

 Work this season is expected to reveal the form of these structures and to 

 define more clearly their period. At present they provide an unrivalled 

 example of complicated but beautifully distinct stratification. 



Mr. F. Elgee. — The camp on Eston Hills. 



This is perched on the edge of a sandstone cliff at Eston Nab (800 feet), 

 in the extreme north-east of Yorkshire. It consists of a semicircular 

 rampart and outer fosse about 350 yards in circumference. Excavations 

 undertaken by the Cleveland Naturalists' Field Club, 1927-29, point to 

 a Bronze Age date. Fragments of a coarse, reddish-brown pottery asso- 

 ciated with small pieces of calcined human bone, flint implements, stone 

 pounders, etc., and found on the site of hearths, are similar to those of the 

 Late Bronze Age in the Heathery Burn Cave, co. Durham. No hut sites 

 were discovered, but on the cliff-edge about half-way between the rampart 

 ends there was a burial-place with cremations, a decayed Bronze Age 

 food-vessel, leaf-shaped flint arrow-heads, scrapers and flakes. No objects 

 were found at the bottom of the fosse excavations, which were impeded by 

 a thick infilling of heavy sandstones falling from a wall, the foundations of 

 which can be traced on the inner side of the rampart. No Iron Age objects 

 were found, and this accords with their general absence from north-east 

 Yorkshire, where Bronze Age, especially Mid-Bronze Age remains are the 

 dominant feature. 



