620 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 
exist, no doubt, farther south than Killala ; and more sites may yet be 
discovered along the portion of coast which I have examined. As it is, 
I have shown a chain of sixteen or seventeen sites, extending from 
near Dublin, round the eastern, northern, and western coasts, as far as 
Killala, all showing a similar mode of living among the former inhabi- 
tants, but each settlement of people or tribe using for implements, as 
far as we know at present, whatever kind of rock they found in their 
own neighbourhood. 
The Pottery. 
The pottery from the old surface is both plain and ornamented, and 
all is undoubtedly domestic. Some Irish archaeologists are of opinion 
that all ornamented pottery is sepulchral; and Canon Greenwell's 
authority is given in support of that view, l^o doubt some of the 
ornamented pottery found in barrows in England may, from its coarse 
and porous nature, be unfit for domestic purposes ; but as other grave 
goods are found to be similar to those of everyday life, I do not see 
why the pottery should have been an exception. Very little pottery 
has been found in the British Isles that we can say was only used for 
domestic purposes ; but Professor Boyd Dawkins, in his Early Man in 
Britain^ page 268, gives an example of a hut-site of undoubted neolithic 
age in which ornamented pottery was found. If, however, we go to 
the Lake Dwellings of Switzerland, we find at Bobenhausen, which is 
taken as the type of the neolithic age by eminent Continental autho- 
rities, and at Wangen, another typical Stone Age settlement, abundance 
of domestic pottery which is ornamented. It is probable that the 
forms, and also the ornamentation to a large extent, of the Bronze Age 
pottery had its origin in the Stone Age, and would be continued with 
slight modifications down to the Iron Age, and that many points of 
resemblance will be found in the pottery of one age to that of another. 
If burials in the Bronze Age took place in the sandhills of the seashore, 
as we find was the case in hills of sand inland, it is possible that the 
pottery of two distinct ages might after denudation of the sand con- 
taining it get mingled, and thus create confusion ; but I see nothing in 
the pottery that is excavated from the old surface layer to cause doubts 
in anyone's mind as to its neolithic character. It is all hand-made, 
fairly strong, but not fine, and though in some cases the ornamentation 
is abundant, it is not very artistic. 
The Black Layer or Old Surface. 
The black layer is generally from four to six inches thick, but it 
may sometimes reach to ten or twelve inches. It is thickest in the 
