Bone weaving-combs, which were found in pit-dwellings at Highfield, near Fisherton in Wiltshire, evidently belonged, like the querns with which they were associated (J. Stevens, Parochial Hist. of St. Mary Bourne, p. 25), to the Early Iron Age (cf. Sir J. Evans, Ancient Stone Implements, 1897, p. 251, and Reliquary, N. S., vii, 1901, p. 115); and although Professor Boyd Dawkins (Early Man, &c., p. 268) pleads that the pottery, which was ‘ornamented with incised curves’, was ‘not turned in the lathe’, that does not prove that it was made in the Neolithic or even the Bronze Age (see p. 244, infra); while the ‘curves’ suggest that it was Late Celtic.
[303] Journ. Anthr. Inst., xi, 1882, pp. 472-3.
[304] Archaeol. Cant., xiii, 1880, pp. 122-6.
[305] Journ. Anthr. Inst., xxix, 1899, p. 128; Vict. Hist. of ... Surrey, i, 237.
[306] Proc. Soc. Ant., 2nd ser., xii, 1887-9, pp. 258-63; xvii, 1897-9, pp. 216-21; Journ. Anthr. Inst., xxix, 1899, pp. 124, 127, 134.
[307] Norfolk Archaeology, iii, 1852, pp. 232-6; Journ. Anthr. Inst., xxix, 1899, p. 127; Vict. Hist. of ... Surrey, i, 236. Cf. Archaeol. Cambr., 6th ser., iv, 1904, p. 200.
[308] Vict. Hist. of ... Hants, i, 258-9.
[309] Journ. Anthr. Inst., xxix, 1899, pp. 127, 139.
[310] Ib., p. 140. Stone mounds have been discovered in South Wales by Messrs. T. C. Cantrill and O. T. Jones, who regard them as ‘probably the remains of prehistoric hearths or cooking-places’ (Archaeol. Cambr., 6th ser., vi, 1906, p. 17); but, as they ‘range in diameter from 6 feet or so to as much as 50 feet’ (ib., p. 19), I would suggest that the cooks must have been of Brobdingnagian stature.
For descriptions of other pit-dwellings which may perhaps be of neolithic age, see G. Young, Hist. of Whitby, ii, 1817, pp. 666-83; T. Bateman, Vestiges of the Ant. of Derbyshire, 1848, p. 126; Journ. Brit. Archaeol. Association, xi, 1855, pp. 305-13; Anthr. Rev., v, 1867, p. 253; and Archaeologia, xlii, 1869, pp. 223-4.