Arrow-heads are not common in Dorset, but six were found in a barrow in Fordington Field, Dorchester. They are beautiful specimens, barbed and tongued; the heaviest only weighs twenty-five grains, and the lightest sixteen grains. Mr. Warne mentions the finding of arrow-heads, and also (a rare find in Dorset) a stone battle-axe, from a barrow on Steepleton Down.
Charred wood is a conspicuous feature, and animal bones are also met with in the county, and in such positions as to prove that they were placed there at the time of the primary interment. Stags’ horns, often with the tips worn as though they had been used as picks, are found, both in the barrows and in the ditches.
So far only objects belonging to the Bronze Age have been mentioned; but as later races used these burial-places, objects of a later date are common. Bronze and iron objects and pottery, and coins of every period, are often found above the original interment and in the ditches. This makes it difficult for an investigator to settle with certainty the different positions in which the objects were deposited; and unless he is most careful he will get the relics from various periods mixed. Therefore, the practice of digging a hole into one of these burial-mounds, for the sake of a possible find, cannot be too heartily condemned. Anyone who is ambitious to open a barrow should carefully read those wonderful books on Excavations in Cranborne Chase, by the late Lieut.-General Pitt-Rivers, before he puts a spade into the ground; for a careless dig means evidence destroyed for those that come after.
Most Dorset people will remember the late curator of the County Museum, Mr. Henry Moule, and perhaps some may have heard him tell this story, but it will bear repeating. A labourer had brought a piece of pottery to the Museum, and Mr. Moule explained to him that it not only came from a barrow, but that it was most interesting, and that he would like to keep it for the Museum. The man looked surprised, and said, “Well, Meäster, I’ve a-knocked up scores o’ theäsem things. I used to level them there hipes (or heäps) an’ drawed awaÿ the vlints vor to mend the roads; an’ I must ha’ broke up dozens o’ theäse here wold pots; but they niver had no cwoins inzide ’em.” Those who knew Mr. Moule can imagine his horror.
Much more remains to be done by Dorset people in investigating these most interesting relics of the past, for we know little of the builders of these mounds; and, as Mr. Warne says in his introduction to The Celtic Tumuli of Dorset:—
If the Dorsetshire barrows cannot be placed in comparison with many of those of Wiltshire ... or Derbyshire, they may, nevertheless, be regarded with intense interest, as their examination has satisfactorily established the fact that they constitute the earliest series of tumuli in any part of the kingdom; whilst they identify Dorset as one of the earliest colonised portions of Britain.
THE ROMAN OCCUPATION
By Captain J. E. Acland
Curator, Dorset County Museum
LTHOUGH we are dealing with historic and not prehistoric times in describing the occupation of the County of Dorset by the Romans, it is to the work of the spade and not of the pen that we must turn for the memorials of that most interesting and important period, which lasted nearly four hundred years; when the all-powerful, masterful race, the conquerors of the world, held sway, enforced obedience to their laws, and inaugurated that system of colonisation which was perhaps the best the world has ever seen—a system designed and developed according to exact regulations, which savoured more of military discipline than of that civil liberty which we associate with the profession of agriculture.