Mr. Tate on the Celtic Town at Greaves Ash. 311 



to tlie Roman era, for coins of British kings, cotemporary 

 with the first Roman emperors, have heen discovered within 

 it. Worle camp, with its stone ramparts and hut circles, is 

 also similar ;* and another ancient British town, Chysauster, 

 near Penzance, has the same kind of stone walls defending 

 circular and oval huts.f Groups of similar hut circles, but 

 without the protecting ramparts, have been discovered, chiefly 

 in wild moorlands, in Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Roxburghshire 

 and Aberdeenshire. 



Sir Gardener Wilkinson considers, that the ancient Britons 

 alarmed by the first invasion by the Romans, erected Carn 

 Brae and other strong camps to protect themselves against 

 this new and formidable enemy. The relics, however, found 

 in the valley of the Breamish, speak of an earlier period than 

 this ; and indeed the discovery of the flint weapons suggests 

 the enquiry, whether the Fortlets there may not have been 

 the work of some pre-Celtic race who possessed a low cere- 

 bral development and were ignorant of the use of metals ? Of 

 such a people, the late Mr. Bateman found remains in great 

 chambered cairns in Derbyshire, which are doubtless among 

 the oldest British sepulchres.^ But no traces of this race or 

 peculiar tribe have as yet been seen in Northumberland. 

 Whatever may have been the aboriginal people — whether 

 AUophyllian or Celtic, — there appears to have been two great 

 successive immigrations of Celts — one of Hibernico-Celts,with 

 whom it is supposed came the use of bronze, and who after 

 living some centuries in England were driven onward to Ire- 

 land by the next population wave. With the later immigra- 

 tion — that of the Cambro-Celts — iron may have been intro- 

 duced ; for we find iron weapons and instruments in not 

 unfrequent use when Csesar invaded our shores. Between 

 these several periods any hard distinctive line cannot be 

 drawn, for Mr. Bateman's researches among barrows show, 

 that bronze and stone weapons are not unfrequently deposited 

 in the same grave. The material used indeed would depend 

 much, especially in transition periods, on the means of the 

 individual ; while the chieftain could purchase the valuable 

 bronze sword or spear, his humble follower may have been 

 unable to procure any better weapon, than that made of wood 

 or stone. 



The stones of the walls of the town in Greaves Ash bear 



* Somerset Archseological Proceedings, 1851, p. 14. 



t Arch. Journal, No. 99, p. 40. 



I Bateman's Ten Years Diggings into Celtic Graves, p. 93, 144, <S.c, 



