Notes on the Roman Antiquities in the Westbury Collection. 465 



be remembered, seem to have been of the same unsubstantial 

 character, and to have left few lasting remains behind them. 



One of the wells that must have supplied the settlement with 

 water was discovered in 1879, and opened by Mr.Henry Cunnington, 

 when a considerable quantity of broken pottery and other objects 

 were found in the mud at the bottom. Among the bones of animals 

 thus found is a well-preserved and complete skull of the Bos 

 longifrons : and the skull of a horse also complete, with a hole 

 pierced in the cheek bone, that appears to have been caused during 

 life by a thrust from a small spear, or an arrow. 



Parts of four human skulls were also found at the bottom of 

 this well, and as they are scarcely likely to have got into the well 

 in the ordinary course of things, they perhaps bear evidence to a 

 violent and tragic end to the settlement, such as so often seems to 

 have been the fate of habitations at the end of the Eomano-British 

 period. 



Considering the casual way in which the discoveries were made 

 it is indeed fortunate that such a large collection of fragile pottery 

 and delicate metal objects was safely brought together. Pottery 

 naturally forms the bulk of the collection, and happily quite a 

 good proportion of the vessels have survived, more or less intact, 

 the vicissitudes of their burial and resuscitation. 



Perhaps the most interesting and important, from an historical 

 point of view, is the series of red glazed Gaulish pottery, generally 

 known as Samian ware. 



Thanks to recent archseological research it is now known that 

 this pottery was made at several centres in Roman Gaul, notably 

 at La Graufesenque and Lezoux, in what is now France, and at 

 Eheinzabern and Westerndorff in Germany. 1 It is believed that 

 the manufacture began about 30 A.D. and continued on to about 

 250—260 A.D. 2 



The systematic study of the types of decoration, and forms of 

 vessels, has made it possible to date approximately the various 



1 See the works of Dragendorff and Dechelette ; also Catalogue of Soman 

 Pottery in the British Museum, 1908. 



2 Catalogue of Soman Pottery, p. xxvi. 



