160 ANTIQUITIES Ol^^ ALDERNEY. 



ware, and large quantities of Roman tiles, some of which were 

 centuries later built into the walls of the Nunnery, support 

 the opinion that this was a Koman establishment. 



A Roman settlement in Alderney does not at all imply 

 military occupation of the place. The idea would simply be 

 that during the domination of the Romans, people from the 

 neighbouring parts of Gaul, who had adopted Roman habits 

 and customs, came to live in Alderney, perhaps during the 

 summer only ; that they built houses there, furnished them in 

 the Roman fashion, and brought with them domestic utensils 

 and ornaments such as were in use on the Continent. 



Cists occur in connection with burials in each of the pre- 

 historic ages, but they continued in use for centuries later. The 

 shape of the tumulus covering it, the treatment of the corpse, 

 and the articles connected with the interment, generally enable 

 the explorer to decide to which period any one cist belongs. A 

 great number of cists have been discovered both in Alderney 

 and Guernsey. In the Journal of the Archaeological Associa- 

 tion, Vol. I., page 305, Mr. F. C. Lukis gives a list of those 

 he had examined in Guernsey. He says twenty were found 

 between 1818 and 1838. Since this Society has been in 

 existence, members have been invited to inspect one at the 

 Vale, one near Pulias, one at Mr. Duquemin's, Cobo, and four 

 near Richmond. Unfortunately in most of these cases nothing 

 whatever was found in the enclosure ; but the long iron swords 

 with one cutting edge only, found in one of those at Richmond 

 and at Mr. Duquemin's, indicate a date later than the Roman 

 occupation. I have given a list of the cists Mr. Lukis found 

 in Alderney, but in no instance does he mention any imple- 

 ments as found in them, so we cannot be sure that any of the 

 Alderney ones belong to this later period. 



I have elsewhere* hazarded a conjecture that these 

 Guernsey cists were the last resting-places of Scandinavian 

 Vikings, who ravaged these islands and the coasts of the 

 Channel generally, from the fifth to the eleventh centuries. 

 They are not Christian burials, they never occur in connection 

 with the ecclesiastical establishments founded by the mis- 

 sionary bishops who introduced Christianity into the islands. 



During the earlier periods the neighbourhood of Longy 

 Bay had been thickly peopled, as is shown by the remains dis- 

 covered there, but in later times when the inhabitants no longer 

 depended upon the sea for their chief supply of food, but turned 

 their attention more and more to pastoral and agricultural 

 pursuits, they found Longy Bay too exposed ; they preferred 

 * Transactions, 1897, page 164. 



