528 A Late Celtic Inhabited Site at All Cannings Cross Farm. 



pottery of quite this same type of ornamentation has as yet 

 been found^; it bears a general resemblance to pottery from the 

 Glastonbury and Meare Lake villages, but retains a distinct 

 character of its own that may be due to local influences, and 

 may prove to be a local type. 



No trace of either the pits or ditches, or of any banks, can be 

 detected on the surface ; the ground seems to have been under 

 cultivation for a long time, and all such surface vestiges have been 

 entirely obliterated. To trace the course of these ditches, to de- 

 termine the size of the settlement, and to examine it thoroughly, 

 would be a very expensive and laborious undertaking. 



Mr. C. H. Maidment, of Bridge House, Allcannings, the owner 

 of the property, very kindly gave permission for the digging. 

 Four men were employed digging for nine days. 



The finds will be placed in the Society's Museum, at Devizes. 



The Hammerstones. 



As already said, the chief object in undertaking these slight 

 excavations was to obtain if possible, some clue to the use of the 

 innumerable hammerstones with which the site is strewn, but 

 nothing definite was found to explain their presence. Their 

 number certainly suggests that they must have been used in some 

 special work or industry carried on at this spot. It is true that 

 rough hammerstones of flint and sarsen are, with the exception 

 of flint scrapers-, the commonest form of stone implements to be 

 found in this part of the country. But this does not in any way 

 account for their peculiar abundance on this site, particularly 

 as flint flakes and other worked flints are scarcely to be found 

 at all. 



There must be some thousands of these hammerstones scattered 

 over an area of a few acres. A collection of some three hundred 

 of flint and some fifty of sarsen has been made, and it seems 



^ The pottery in the Blackmore Museum, at Salisbury, from pits at High- 

 field, and some fragments found at Liddington Castle by Mr. A. D. Passmore, 

 are perhaps comparable with it. 



