Ancient Britain and the Invasions of Julius Caesar

by T. Rice Holmes

Dr. Joseph Anderson (Scotland in Pagan Times,—the Bronze and Stone Ages, p. 139, with which cf. D. Christison, Early Fortifications in Scotland, 1898, pp. 350-3, 380-1) observes that no one Scottish fort ‘can be assigned with certainty to the Bronze Age’; but it is nevertheless morally certain that many did then exist.

Mr. R. Burnard (Vict. Hist. of ... Devon, i, 366) remarks that it is unsafe to infer from the fact that Cranbrook Castle, in the valley of the Teign, contained pottery of Bronze Age type, that it belonged to that period; for such pottery was also used in the Early Iron Age. Certainly it was; and so also were bronze implements (see pp. 266-7, infra); but, as a rule, the discovery of Bronze Age pottery, or bronze implements, unaccompanied by objects of the Early Iron Age, is enough to raise a presumption, which in most instances would be correct, that the site was occupied in the Bronze Age.

[535] Scheme for recording Ancient Defensive Earthworks and Fortified Enclosures, 1903, pp. 2-3, 6 (published by the Congress of Archaeological Societies). My classification differs slightly in form, but not in substance, from that adopted by the Congress.

[536] Journ. Derbyshire Archaeol. and Nat. Hist. Soc., xxv, 1903, pp. 175-80.

[537] Archaeologia, xliv, 1873, p. 424; xlix, 1885, p. 181; Journ. Roy. Soc. Ant. Ireland, xxxv, 1905, p. 244; Archaeol. Cambr., 3rd ser., xi, 1865, pp. 77-81. Many of the ‘cliff-castles’ probably do not belong to the Bronze Age (see Vict. Hist. of ... Cornwall, i, 451-2, 458-9).

[538] Journ. Anthr. Inst., vi, 1877, pp. 288-9. See also Archaeologia, xlvi, 1881, p. 458.

[539] Journ. Anthr. Inst., vi, 1877, pp. 288-9. The same feature exists in the camp at Seaford.

[540] See p. 98, supra.

[541] See Archaeol. Journal, xxii, 1865, p. 354.

[542] E.g. Ambresbury Banks in Essex, Yarnbury on Salisbury Plain, and Hunsbury near Northampton. See R. C. Hoare, Anc. Wilts, i, 1812, pp. 89-90; Trans. Epping Forest ... Field Club, ii, 1882, pp. 55-68; and Journ. Brit. Archaeol. Association, N. S., vii, 1901, p. 23.