404 Pre-Historic Mammalia Associated with Man. 



liave pi*oposed tile term Pre-M storic,* because they came into 

 being at a time far beyond the ken of the historian, some of 

 them also long after the close of the post-glacial era. Un- 

 fortunately I cannot separate those belonging to the stone folk 

 from those living in the bronze age in Britain. The remains 

 found in tumuli and villages will be first considered. 



In 1862 I had the opportunity of examining the remains at 

 Stanlake,f a small hamlet in Berkshire. They were found in 

 and around the circular depressions and trenches which mark 

 the site of a village probably of Keltic age. They consisted 

 of large quantities of the bones, teeth, and skulls of animals 

 that had been used for food, such as Bos longifrons in great 

 abundance, the sheep or goat, the horse, red-deer, pig ; and 

 there were also the dog, cat, and martin. The metacarpal of 

 a roe- deer had been polished, and exhibited the marks of 

 friction by a string. Along with them were large quantities of 

 flint flakes, rudely chipped lumps of flint and coarse pottery 

 and ashes. There was nothing found to stamp the absolute 

 date of the village, but it probably may have been inhabited 

 at the time of the Roman invasion. In the tumuli of Wiltshire 

 the same group of animals has been met with by Dr. Thurnam, 

 with the exception of the cat and martin. In the same county 

 also the skull of urus has been found underneath a tumulus 

 near Calne,J associated with remains of the deer and wild boar, 

 and fragments of pottery ornamented with right lines. It is 

 remarkable as the only authenticated instance of the recurrence 

 of the animal with the remains of man in pre-historic times in 

 Britain. 



A vast number of bones have been dredged out of the 

 Thames near Kew Bridge, along with polished stone axes and 

 bronze swords. Their condition proves them to have belonged 

 to animals that were eaten for food, the horse, Bos longifrons, 

 pig, sheep, goat, red-deer, and roe-deer. There were dredged 

 up also with them several human skulls that had been gashed 

 and partially cleft, and Roman horse trappings. The river at 

 Kew is shallow, and when we take the number of bronze 

 swords into consideration, some of them even Avith the metallic 

 end of the scabbard still on the blade, the human skulls and 

 the Roman phalcrse, it is very probable that it was the site of 

 a battle between the Kelts and the Roman legions. All that 

 can be said with reference to the date of the accumulation of 

 bones, is that it was probably anterior to the time of the 

 Romans. A little higher up the river, near the new water- 



* '• Tntrod. Pleistocene Mammalia." Part I., 18GG. Paleontogra|>hieal Socio 1 v. 

 t " Arehrcologia," vol. xxxvii. p. 3G3. ''Proceedings of the Society of Anti- 

 quaries," vol i\\ p. 93. 



% " Fossil Skull of Ox." By Henry Woods, A.L.S. 4to. London, 1839. 



