2*26 MORTIMER : PRE-HISTORY OF THE VILLAGE OF FIMBER. 
suddenly changed, and a violent thunderstorm put an end to the 
operations by covering the bottom with about 2 feet of water. 
But in the dry summer of 1884 the water was sufficiently low to 
enable the villagers to remove from this mere the whole of the mud 
which had accumulated during untold ages along its centre to the 
depth of 3 to 6 feet. This exposed the original irregular bottom, 
which much resembled, in places, shallow pits from which clay had 
been at different times taken. The finding, about 2 feet down in 
the mud, an iron spear-head, probably Anglo-Saxon, or possibly 
Romano-British, goes far to prove tliat this portion of tlie mere had 
not been cleaned for many centuries. 
Returning to the barrow. At the west end of the churcli 
pi. ix., fig. 10, under the site of the old tower, at a depth of 
5 feet below the present surface, and about 3 feet below tlie r/'^/jr/.v of 
the original church, the workmen came upon animal bones, car- 
bonized wood, and lastly, after having dug up a small fiint axe 
and a])parently destroyed three small vases, they made the 
find known to the writer. On arriving at the place we found that 
the workmen had reached within a few inches of the bottom of a gTave 
cut a little way into the chalk rock, and after a careful search we 
found further portions of two food vases and part of a drinking cup 
having a wide base ; also small bits of the finely ornamented 
rim of an incense cup. Near these were a portion of a bone-pin, 
several hand-struck flakes, all of flint, from the neighbouring 
chalk, a very large tusk of the wild boar, and portions of the 
upper valve of " Pecten opercularis" which may have been valued 
as a memento of, at that time, a rather hazardous expedition 
to the eastern shore-line, as probably the boar's tusk betokened the 
remembrance of a successful hunting expedition in the then swampy 
jungle of Holderness. Some dark matter, bits of burnt wood, 
splinters of bone and teeth of the ox and the pig were lying in places 
on the floor of the grave, but little trace of human bone was observed, 
probably the body had become completely decayed. 
A little to the south-east of the grave were indications of wliat 
proved to be a sloping-sided trench feet deep, running due south, 
but owing to the ground being covered with building material we were 
