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NOTES ON IKON" OBJECTS OF KOMAN (?) AGE IN 

 THE SOCIETY'S MUSEUM AT DEVIZES. 



By the Rev. E. H. Goddard. 



Among the antiquities preserved in the Society's Museum, and 

 now placed amongst the Koman collections, are a number of iron 

 objects, the majority of which were presented to the Museum many 

 years ago, and came from different sites on the downs — largely from 

 Wilsford Down and Kushall Down, south of the Pewsey Yale. The 

 latter locality is well known, from Col. Hawley's excavations, and 

 otherwise, to have been the site of extensive Komano-British settle- 

 ments. In view of the interest of some of these articles in them- 

 selves, and especially in view of the very perishable material of which 

 they are composed — for few materials are more difficult to preserve 

 than iron that has once become badly rusted — it seems worth 

 while to describe and illustrate them somewhat fully. It is true i 

 that in hardly a single case is there any record of the finding of 

 these objects. The locality from which they come is alone recorded 

 and probably the greater number of them were found either by 

 flint-diggers or during the breaking up of the down lands which j 

 was so prevalent before the later years of the " seventies." There 

 is, indeed, it has to be confessed, as far as the evidence of discovery 

 or association goes, nothing in very many cases to prevent the | 

 possibility of these objects being of mediaeval or even more recent : 

 date, but as a matter of fact mediaeval and modern objects are not 

 found on the downs, whereas objects of the Koman and earlier ages : 

 are so found in great abundance. The early population lived on i 

 the downs, the mediaeval population did not, nor so far as we can 

 judge, did they either use or lose their tools thereon. In the case I 

 of many of the objects here illustrated, comparison with objects 

 illustrated in General Pitt-Kivers' Excavations and found in the 

 Komano-British villages on the southern border of the county, or 

 with the iron objects found at Silchester, and now in the Keading 

 Museum, leaves no reasonable doubt of their being of the lioman 



