4 The Re-erection of Two Fallen Stones at Avehury. 



The body had been laid on the level surface of the undisturbed 

 chalk, without the slightest depression or hollow having been made 

 to receive it. The bones were found to have been disturbed and 

 broken in the ground, so that it was not possible to ascertain 

 accurately the original position of the skeleton beyond the fact 

 that it was crouched, and with its head to the East. Nor was it 

 possible to say what had been the original position of the drinking 

 cup. The soil and rubble at this spot is 15in. deep, so that the 

 burial must have been a very shallow one, unless, as is not im- 

 possible, there was originally a slight mound banked up against 

 the stone, that had been levelled by cultivation. 



It seems that cultivation is quite enough to account for the 

 broken and disturbed state in which the burial was found ; 

 labourers on the spot stated that as it is not possible to plough 

 quite up to the sides of the stones, the ground immediately round 

 them is often dug over by hand, and this would account for dis- 

 turbance of the soil at a greater depth than that of ordinary 

 ploughing. 



It is now generally recognised that the " drinking cup " type of 

 pottery belongs to the transition from the Neolithic, or to the 

 earliest Bronze Age, in England, and as there can be little doubt 

 that the burial was made at the foot of the stone after its erection, 

 the importance of the discovery with regard to the date of the 

 monument is considerable. If this is accepted, it shows that this 

 stone, and therefore presumably the whole monument of Avebury, 

 must have been standing at least as early as the beginning of the 

 Bronze Age in England. 



The "drinking cup," of which fragments were found with the 

 bones, was a well-made and well-decorated example of its type, 

 namely, the " ovoid cup with recurved rim," and must have stood 

 not less than 8in. in height. The ware is thin, and baked to a 

 bright red both inside and out, showing the grey paste in the 

 middle; the paste is fine and sparingly mixed with sand. The 

 vessel was decorated from lim to base with a series of horizontal 

 lines, alternating with rows of herring-bone pattern, and bands of 

 the plain tooled surface. The horizontal lines, and the lines 



