130 'Notes on a Late Celtic Rubbish Heap, near Oare. 



The surfaces are often very smooth, finely tooled and polished. 

 The bowls are all quite free of ornament, but a few have a band 

 of incised lines, or "cordons" round their shoulders (PL V.,C,E.)' 



The pottery of the other vessels of probably native make shows 

 the same characteristics as that of the bowls. There are one 

 hundred and fifty fragments of pots and jars, generally with 

 curving rims, 1 and sometimes showing trellis and zigzag line- 

 decorations (PI. V., A ; PL VII., G, D. ; PL VI., B, C, D). 



Pound covers with circular basin-shaped handle knobs seem to 

 have been in fairly common use (PL VII., E) ; of these there are 

 seventy-nine fragments, including eleven handles. 



Of plates or saucers there are only twenty-five fragments 

 (PL IV., F), a curiously small number according to our modern 

 usages in proportion to that of the bowls, the explanation 

 probably being that dishes and platters of wood were used in- 

 stead of those of earthenware. All the pottery, including the 

 bowls, appears to be wheel-turned, and is well made, and well baked. 



Mr. A. G. Wright, of the Corporation Museum, Colchester, very 

 kindly examined and reported upon specimens of the pottery, and 

 later, at his suggestion, specimens were sent to Mr. Peginald Smith, 

 at the British Museum, who also very kindly made notes upon 

 them. The bowl with the bead rim so common at Oare, is it 

 appears, of a purely British type and characteristic of Late-Celtic 

 pottery. This type appears in the local ware from Weymouth,. 

 in the British Museum, and among the Late-Celtic pottery in the 

 Colchester Museum. 



Figures C and E on Plate IV are described by Mr. Smith as 

 " very characteristic Late-Celtic pieces." 2 Fig. C is suggestive of 

 a metal prototype, and it is interesting to find that it bears a close 

 resemblance to a small bronze cup found with a Late-Celtic burial 

 group at Colchester, which is said to date from about 150 B.C. 



1 Basin-shaped rims with upright flanges are conspicuous by their 

 absence. It is apparently a later type. See General Pitt-Eivers' Excavations^ 

 vol. II., 168. 



2 Fig. E PL IV. is shown as conjecturally restored on the analogy of similar 

 vessels from Rotherley, Pitt-Eivers, II. PL CIX., Fig. 1, and an example in 

 the Spitty Coll. at Colchester, No. 1616. 



