Recent Wiltshire Books, Pamphlets, Articles, <£c, 529 



The purpose of the author is set forth in the preface thus : — " The 

 accepted explanation that the earthworks were tribal strongholds, used 

 for local purposes only, appears to me impossible to maintain after 

 examining a map of the watersheds. These hill forts are obviously 

 arranged systematically along the watersheds, and there is much 

 evidence to prove that they were connected together by a fully- 

 developed system of travel-ways. In the South of England the com- 

 mon meeting place of these hill roads was Avebury, where the greatest 

 prehistoric monuments in Europe are still to be seen. It is not un- 

 reasonable to suppose that this central gathering ground was the seat 

 of government, and that its authority extended as far as the roads that 

 radiate from it, and the earthworks that protected them. The evidence, 

 though mostly exclusive, points to the Stone Age as the period when 

 the hill forts were built, and if the ridge roads can be attributed to 

 the same time it follows that a civilization existed in this country long 

 before the Celtic invasions. To what stage that civilization had ad- 

 vanced it is difficult to realize, but the harbours connected with the 

 ridge roads suggest that there was much trade over the seas, and the 

 stone circles at Avebury, Stonehenge, Knowlton, and Rollright are 

 proof that astronomy had advanced beyond the limits of savage outlook. 

 It is indeed not impossible that the men of the Bronze Age destroyed 

 a civilization more fully developed than their own. At least the sun 

 worship of Neolithic man appears to have been a higher form of religion 

 than demoniac Druidism." In order to establish his theory the author 

 assumes that all the large contour camps are of the Stone Age and 

 speaks of "hoards of flint implements" having been found in many of 

 them, statements which have really no foundation in the known facts 

 of the case. Indeed excavation is more and more tending to show that 

 many of the larger camps belong more probably to the times succeeding 

 than to those preceding the Bronze Age. Barrows and lynchetts and 

 ditches and settlements anywhere in the neighbourhood of "ridgeways" 

 or " ox droves " are regularly cited as proving the Neolithic Age of the 

 roads, whereas the overwhelming majority of the barrows are round 

 barrows, and therefore presumably of the Bronze Age, whilst there is 

 nothing to show that the ditches and settlements are not of the Iron 

 Age or the Roman time, and the lynchetts may be later still. The 

 author speaks, for instance, of Martinsell as "a complete Neolithic 

 settlement" ; it is far more probably Late Celtic or Romano-British, 

 though the age has never been really determined. He regards Avebury 

 as twice as old as Stonehenge, though on what ground it would be 



difficult to say. 



The camps in his view are fortresses, strung out along the already 

 existing ways, for the protection of the trade routes and the merchandise 

 carried along them from Devon and Cornwall and Dorset to the 

 Chilterns, and East Anglia ; the single ditched camps being cattle 

 kraals, generally to be found in the neighbourhood of the stronger 

 double-ditched fortresses. The barrows are arranged in lines or singly 

 on hill tops as sign posts to guide the traveller along the trails. It is 



