A HISTORY OF DEVONSHIRE 



complicated system of cattle and sheep pens. There is no suggestion in the construction and 

 capacity of the walls of anything but protection from the weather, and for night corralling of cattle. 



The little pottery found in the huts appeared to be hand-made, and the ornamentation of the 

 Bronze Age type. No cooking or fire holes were observed, but fires were evidently made on the 

 paved floors, for many of these were strewn with charcoal and ashes. Pebbles, which had been 

 fired and then used for cooking purposes, were numerous, and many large river-pebbles were found 

 which had evidently been used as anvils and pounders. Flint objects were few and far between, and 

 those which turned up were unimportant. 



Such then in brief is a description of some of the villages and dwellings of the early pastoral 

 race who migrated from the lowlands as each summer came round, and squatted with their flocks 

 and herds on the breezy uplands of Dartmoor. 



One of the striking peculiarities of the examination of the hut circles is the almost entire 

 absence in them of means of grinding grain ; one only, on Whiten Ridge, yielded a muUer, oval in 

 shape, and with a grinding surface of 1 2 by 9 in. It must, however, be borne in mind that parched 

 grain could easily have been reduced to meal by many of the flat pebbles and pounders found in the 

 hut circles without their appearance specially suggesting an occasional use for this purpose. 



Up to the present no metallic objects have been discovered in the hut circles, indeed the whole 

 surface of Dartmoor, including the graves, has yielded but few implements or weapons made of 

 bronze. No middens have yet been found in any of the hut settlements. This is not surprising, 

 for this primitive folk had little to throw away which would endure ; potsherds, broken pebbles, 

















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Fig. 8. — Plan op Fernworthy Cairns 



and spalls of flint exhaust the list suggested to one's mind. These thrown outside the door of the 

 hut would be speedily trodden in and disappear in the peaty soil. A few of these were fortunately 

 allowed to remain in the huts, and we are thus enabled to form some idea of the utensils employed. 

 We are also able from these and from the ornamentation and nature of the pottery to gauge the state 

 of culture in which these people existed. They must have led peaceful lives, for only one arrow- 

 head of flint has been found in a hut circle, and but few outside. These people existed at a time 

 when bronze was known in Devonshire, but thus far no trace of early tin-smelting has been 

 discovered in any of the hut circles. 



Yes Tor Bottom (O. S. cvi, SE.). — One hut circle, just beyond the twentieth milestone on 

 the Princetown Railway, yielded tin slag, and the remains of an earthenware mug or jug, of 

 fourteenth or early fifteenth century type, 6 in. under the surface ; but this was clearly a compara- 

 tively modern intrusion, for the true floor of the hut circle was not reached until 20 in. had been 

 removed, and this prehistoric level yielded the rim and two fragments of a hand-made cooking pot, 

 with chevron ornamentation and one fragment of flint, and a flake of the same material. Later tin 

 streamers had adapted the hut for their requirements in the same manner as a hut had been used on 

 Shapley Common — probably by a shepherd — who had left behind him his eighteenth-century 

 tobacco pipe. 



That a stone-using people existed on Dartmoor is amply demonstrated, irrespective of the 

 evidence obtained from the hut circles, from the fact that its surface or sub-surface has in 

 almost all directions yielded large quantities of flint spalls, amongst which cores, flakes, and 

 implements exist in considerable numbers. They are found in profusion at Post Bridge, Brownberry, 

 and Huccaby — examples of the few cultivated spots on the moor. There is no doubt that in many 



356 



