vol. xx. (2) NOTES ON COTTESWOLD-MALVERN REGION 
127 
and cists of the Cotteswolds. A large population is indicated 
by the number and variety of these monuments and the 
protective enclosures that still survive, as well as the 
innumerable flint implements and flakes with which the 
surface soil of the Cotteswolds is strewn. 
On the Severn Plain the signs of occupation by Neolithic 
man are comparatively rare, and but few of his implements 
or remains of his villages have been found. The surface soil 
at Beckford and Conderton have yielded a few specimens of 
flint flakes and arrow heads. The cause of this scarcity may 
be that on the depression of the land to its present level 
the Plain became too marshy for settlements, and it is also 
probable that the uplands were preferred for safety. Yet there 
is a similar absence of the signs of occupation on the Malvems, 
where flint implements have been found only at Summer Hill, 
North Hill, and Mathon. Perhaps the general steepness of 
the hills made them unsuitable for Neolithic man’s mode of life. 
The line of fault on the eastern side of the Range generally 
determines the upward limits of cultivation and also the 
positions of the ancient roads. Above this line the nature of 
the rocks, the steepness of the gradients, and the scantiness 
of the soil have always been unfavourable to cultivation. 
Below the fault, along which the principal springs are thrown 
out, the slopes of the hills and the valleys were mainly swamps, 
and the roads naturally came to be developed above them. 
By these conditions the greater part of the Malvern Range 
was almost isolated in Neolithic times. 
While no flint or other stone implements of Chellean or earlier 
date have been found on the Cotteswolds, many of the worked 
flints that occur there are claimed to be of later Palaeolithic 
types, varying from Solutrian to Magdalenian. There 
are, however, very similar types in Yorkshire and other regions 
to which Palaeolithic man is supposed, not to have penetrated. 
These may with greater probability be attributed to the 
Neolithic period. The art of flint implement making had 
deteriorated after Solutrian times, and some of the Cotteswold 
forms may have been brought from the Continent by Neolithic 
races, whose occupation continued long enough to allow of 
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