No. 27.-— 1884.] TISSAMAH A RA MA ARCHEOLOGY. * 25 



works at the wiharas, can the presence of the large number 

 of work-people who lived here be accounted for. 



In the second place, a check on the date above adopted 

 is arrived at by a consideration of the position of the 

 remains. The soil in the piece of ground between the lowest 

 of the remains and the Tissa tank is of a very porous 

 nature, and water leaks through it from the tank into the 

 cutting. When the tank contains only five feet of water, 

 the leakage covers all the lowest stratum in its most 

 depressed part, where it is from 14 to 18 feet below the 

 present ground-level. In this part of the stratum there are 

 numerous remains of fires, which were certainly made in 

 situ, there being in many of them the undisturbed ashes 

 and bits of charcoal, and in one instance pieces of burnt 

 Sainbar deer's bones from which the marrow had evidently 

 been extracted, the bones being broken across for this 

 purpose. It hardly needs be said that this lowest stratum 

 must have been deposited before the water of the tank 

 could leak into it and flood it ; that is, the tank cannot have 

 been in its present position at the time. Now, it can 

 clearly be seen that about 200 yards up the bed of the tank 

 from the present embankment there runs a ridge higher 

 than the adjoining ground-level, which, without any doubt, 

 was a former bund, cutting off the whole of this corner of 

 the tank, and meeting the present bank, which is quite 

 straight, at about half-way from the end. (See attached plan.) 

 This, then, was the original line of the embankment at the 

 time when the remains were in course of deposition. The 

 potters, in fact, settled below the tank, where they were 

 not subjected to floods, and yet where they could obtain 

 their clay, and the water required for its manipulation, with 

 the greatest ease. Their clay-pit has now become part of 

 the bed of the tank ; but at that time it lay just below the 

 embankment. All the potters' villages which I have seen in 

 Ceylon have been similarly situated, and it is only what one 

 would naturally expect. When the embankment was made 

 in its present line, and their clay-pit was enclosed in the 

 tank and flooded, the potters must necessarily have removed 

 to some other site, if they had not done so previously. 



When we consider the character of the letters cut on the 

 pottery, and the existence of this former embankment inside 



