802 Inaugural Address by the President of the Society, 



same size, as at Woodcuts and Rotherley. The identified bones of 

 the ox amounted to 36-8 per cent, of the total number o£ fragments ; 

 sheep, 33*8 per cent. ; and horse, 25*2 per cent. No grain was 

 found. In one respect a difference was observed in their culinary 

 practices. In Woodcuts and Rotherley an enormous number of 

 burnt flints were found, which had been used in a red-hot state for 

 boiling food in troughs. In this settlement not a single burnt flint 

 was discovered, which argues an entire difference in their mode of 

 cooking. An interesting discovery was made in the Mid Drain, at 

 the bottom of which, at 2ft. IJin. beneath the surface, a coffin, 

 composed of a dug-out half trunk of a tree, was found with a 

 cremated interment in it. A model of this was exhibited. A 

 similar interment was discovered by me in a tumulus of the Bronze 

 Age, about four miles to the west, which is described in the second 

 volume of my " Excavations in Cranborne Chase," showing that 

 this mode of burial must have survived amongst the Britons until 

 Roman times, and that, in both periods, cremation and inhumation 

 were practiced simultaneously. 



The quality of the pottery and the forms of the earthen vessels 

 tallied with those found in the villages, with some notable differences. 

 The proportion of vessels with loops for suspension and holes in the 

 bottom — supposed by me to be for draining honey, was considerably 

 less in Woody ates. The proportion of loops to the total number 

 of fragments of pottery in the settlement — viz., twenty-eight 

 thousand four hundred and eighty-nine, 1 being 0*03 per cent, in 

 Woodyates, as against 0'29 per cent, in Woodcuts, and 0*79 in 

 Rotherley, showing, either that there was less use for this class of 

 vessel in Woodyates, or that, being more distant from its place of 

 fabrication, it was less easily procured. The proportion of fragments 

 with basin-shaped rims and high ridges was larger than in Rotherley, 

 but not so numerous as in Woodcuts. The class of bowl, with a 

 bead rim, which was very common in the pits at Woodcuts, and 

 also, though in a less degree, at Rotherley, and which were generally 



1 The total number of fragments in "Woodcuts was twenty-seven thousand 

 seven hundred and twenty-one ; and in Rotherloy, eighteen thousand nine 

 hundred and thirty-two. 



