Notes. 



109 



lower 3ft. 5ins. solid chalk in which the pit was cut, widening out at 

 the bottom, the diameter at the upper edge of the chalk being 3ft. and 

 that on the more or less flat floor, 3ft. 9ins. The pits were apparently 

 carefully dug, and one of them the men said had a ring of stones round 

 the top "like round the top of a well." Mrs. Cunnington writes " the 

 flat bone implement 3ins. in length (No. 5 on Plate) seems to have been 

 found in the same pit as the crucible and the two restored pots 

 (illustrated). The most perfect of these pots is 9jins. high, the diameter 

 at the rim being 8 Jin., and at the base 5f in. The other has no actual 

 rim left, but as it now stands is lOJin high, and the diameter of the 

 base is 6ins. The paste of the first was mixed with fossil shell ; the 

 second was sooty on the inside. They are both imperfectly baked, the 

 paste being black in the interior part, and dull red outside. There 

 were in the pits other fragments of similar ware, bones of animals 

 (pig, sheep, and ox), flint flakes, and two scrapers, all very fresh and 

 sharp to the touch, a disc of chalk roughly circular with nearly flat top 

 and bottom 2^in. to 2fin. in diameter and If in. thick. It has no per- 

 foration and weighs T^ozs. There was a considerable quantity of wood 

 ashes amongst the dark soil filling the pits. One of the men had dug 

 for Mr. Gray, at Avebury, and had some idea that the things might be 

 of some value, so he took them home with him and kept them until we 

 bought them from him, otherwise no doubt they would ail have been 

 lost. There was amongst the pottery one piece of a Romano- British 

 mortarium with grains of grit. In all probability this came from the 

 surface and not really from the pit. There is quite a lot of Eoman 

 pottery on the surface about the spot." 



The most interesting find was the half of a small earthenware crucible 

 (No. 4 on Plate) for melting bronze, found in the same pit with the two 

 " Cooking Pots " here illustrated, which have been so carefully restored 

 from a great number of fragments by Mrs. Cunnington. When perfect 

 this crucible was of triangular shape with a lip at each corner. It still 



Section through terrace below the reservoir on Winterbourne 

 Monkton Down. 



retains a stain of bronze on the edge. It measures now 2in. in height 

 by 2|in. in width. A considerable number of similar, small crucibles 

 were found in the Glastonbury Lake Village, and are fully described 

 and illustrated in the very interesting chapter on this subject by Mr. 

 H. St. G. Gray in The Glastonbury Lake Village,\o\. L, p. 300 — 309, in 

 which a list is given of crucibles found elsewhere. Most of these are 



