In some cases these heaps of stone and sticks rise to the surface of the water or even above it, the piles in such cases serving more to hold the mass together than as a support to the platform on which the huts were erected. This mode of construction could only be employed in small lakes. This makes in reality an artificial island, and seems to have been the favorite method of procedure in the British Islands. In Ireland and Scotland immense numbers of these structures are known. They are called crannogs. This cut represents a section of one in Ireland. Though they date back to the Neolithic Age, yet they so exactly meet the wants of a rude people that they were occupied down to historic times.
The advantage of forming settlements where they could only be approached on one side were so great that other places than lakes were resorted to. Peat-bogs furnished nearly as secure a place of retreat as do lakes. These have been well studied in Northern Italy. They do not present many new features. They were constructed like the lake villages, only they were surrounded by a marsh, and not by a lake. In some of the Irish bogs they first covered the surface of the bog with a layer of hazel bushes, and that by a layer of sand, and thus secured a firm surface.11 In this case the villages were still further defended by a breastwork of rough spars, about five feet high. One of the houses of this group was found still in position, though it had been completely buried in peat. No metal had been used in its construction. The timbers had been cut with a stone ax, and the explorer was even so fortunate as to find an ax, which exactly fitted many of the cuts observed on the timbers.
But we are not to suppose that lakes and bogs afforded the only sites of villages. They are found scattered all over the surface of the country, and, as we shall soon see, they show the same painstaking care to secure strong, easily defended positions. They have been generally spoken of as forts, to which the inhabitants resorted only in times of danger. We think, however, they were locations of villages, the customary places of abode. For this is in strict accordance with what we find to be the early condition of savage life in every part of the world.
Traces of these settlements on the main-land have been mostly obliterated by the cultivation of the soil during the many years that have elapsed since their Neolithic founders occupied them. In Switzerland the location of five of these villages are known. In all instances they occupied places very difficult of approach—generally precipitous sides on all but one or two. On the accessible sides ramparts defended them. The relics obtained are in all respects similar to those from the lake villages.12
Fortified inclosures have been described in Belgium. We are told, “They are generally established on points overhanging valleys, on a mass of rocks forming a kind of headland, which is united to the rest of the country by a narrow neck of land. A wide ditch was dug across this narrow tongue of land, and the whole camp was surrounded by a thick wall of stone, simply piled one upon another, without either mortar or cement.” “One of these walls, when described, was ten feet thick, and the same in height.” These intrenched positions were so well chosen that most of them continued to be occupied during the ages which followed. The Romans occasionally utilized them for their camps. Over the whole inclosure of these ancient camps worked flints and remains of pottery have been found.13 These fortified places have been well studied in the south of England.
What is known as the South-Downs in Sussex is a range of hills of a general height of seven hundred feet. This section is about five miles wide and fifty miles long. Four rivers flow through these downs to the sea. In olden times their lower courses must have been deep inlets of the sea, thus dividing those hills into five groups, each separated from the other by a wide extent of water and marsh land. To the north of these hills was a vast expanse of densely wooded country. It is not strange, then, to find traces of numerous settlements among these hills. As the surface soil is very thin, old embankments can still be traced. The cut given is a representation of Cissbury, one of the largest of these camps. It incloses nearly sixty acres. The rampart varies according to the slope of the hill. Where the ascent was at all easy it was made double. Fortified camps are very numerous throughout the hill country. They vary, of course, in size, but the situation was always well chosen.14