66 
LIFE OF DEAN BUCK LAND. 
[CH. III. 
if to no other persons, at least to the woman whose bones 
I have been describing. 
“ The ivory rings and rods and tongue-shaped fragment 
are certainly made from part of the antediluvian tusks 
that lay in the same cave; and as they must have been cut 
to their present shape at a time when the ivory was hard, 
and not crumbling to pieces as it is at present on the 
slightest touch, we may assume to them very high 
antiquity, which is further confirmed by the decayed state 
of the shells that lay in contact with the thigh bone, and, 
like the rods and rings, must have been buried with the 
woman. The circumstance of the remains of a British 
camp existing on the hill immediately above this cave, 
seems to throw much light on the character and date of 
the woman ; and whatever may have been her occupation, 
the vicinity of a camp would afford a motive for residence 
as well as the means of subsistence in what is now so 
exposed and uninviting a solitude. 
“ The fragments of charcoal and recent bones of oxen, 
sheep, and pigs, are probably the remains of culinary 
operations; the larger shells may have been collected, 
also for food, from the adjacent shore, and the small nerite 
shells either have been kept in the pocket for the beauty 
of their yellow colour, or have been used, as I am 
informed by the Rev. Henry Knight, of Newton Nottage, 
they now are in that part of Glamorganshire, in some 
simple species of game. The ivory rods also may have 
been applicable to some game, as we use chess men or 
pins of a cribbage board ; or they may be fragments of 
pins, such as Sir Richard Hoare has found in the barrows 
of Wilts and Dorset, together with large bodkins also of 
ivory, and which were probably used to fasten together the 
coarse garments of the ancient Britons. It is a curious 
coincidence also, that he has found in a barrow near 
Warminster, at Cop Head Hill, the shell of a nerite and 
some ivory beads, which were laid by the skeletons of an 
infant and an adult female, apparently its mother. 
f< That ivory rings were at that time used as armlets, 
is probable from the circumstance of similar rings having 
