84 Archaeology 



Snowshill type accompanying a contracted skeleton under a round barrow 

 at Chippenham — the only metal object of this period in the County with 

 any associations. This find is an outlier firom the recently distinguished 

 Early Bronze Age culture of Wessex. 



The scarcity of the earliest metal objects is doubdess due to the over- 

 rumiing of the County by the Beaker people, who first reached here in a 

 more or less "neolithic" stage of culture. Of the two main groups 

 distinguished in south-eastern Britain, Cambridgeshire was affected 

 mainly by the "A" beakers, the "B" group being represented only by 

 a solitary example from Isleham Fen. The "A" beakers are found dis- 

 tributed round the entire margin of the Fenland, and evidently the Wash 

 formed a main avenue of entry for these people. In Cambridgeshire, they 

 setded upon the larger fen islands (March, Doddington, Ely), and on 

 the low-lying Burnt, Burwell, Isleham, Lode, and Quy Fens. They also 

 pushed up the valleys of the Snad, the Cam, and the Granta; and finds 

 from Therfield Heath and Hitchin suggest that some of them pressed 

 down the Icknield Way to Wessex. The Beaker pottery from the County 

 is outstandingly rich, and special mention should be made of the three 

 handled beakers; two of them are of the rare straight-sided type. 



The open setdement sites, found on sandy hdlocks at Shippea Hill 

 (Plantation and Peacock's Farms) and Isleham, have produced quantities 

 of sherds from beakers with rusticated surface; and, in addition, they have 

 yielded cord-impressed sherds of "food-vessel" affmities with internally 

 bevelled rims. The latter are highly significant, for they show that the 

 "native" element was not submerged by the Beaker invaders. It was 

 among a mixed population that the metal types of the fuU Early Bronze 

 Age circulated. The flint work from the fen sites is of a high standard; 

 shallow pressure flaking is seen to great advantage on the scrapers, the 

 barbed and tanged arrowheads, and the plano-convex knives. 



The County is rich in contracted inliumation burials accompanied by 

 beakers, the graves in every case being flat. Generally, the graves occur 

 singly, but an undoubted cemetery was destroyed over a period of years 

 in. a sand-pit ofl" Springhead Lane, Ely, where the discoveries included at 

 least 14 human jaws, an "A" beaker found together with a perforated 

 stone axe-hammer near the head of a skeleton, and a "C" beaker in 

 company with another skeleton. Among the objects associated with 

 isolated beaker burials may be mentioned "a bull's horn", found with the 

 Wilburton Fen beaker in 1847; while a grave group, recendy discovered 

 at Litde Downham, yielded an "A" beaker, a flint dagger,^ a flint knife, a 

 V-perforated button, and a pulley ring of shale. 



Seventeen similar ones have been found loose in the County. 



