“Stone.—Greenstone pounder, fragments of querns, perforated disk, &c.
“Pottery.—A large collection of fragments of various periods, among the rest several pieces of true Samian ware.”
Mr. Edwin Brown, from whose report this list is taken, concludes that Thor’s cave was occupied during “the late Celtic and Romano-Celtic periods.” The harp-fibulæ are of a pattern identical with several of those discovered in the Victoria Cave, and the holes at their upper ends were probably intended for the reception of enamel. The bronze instrument, consisting of a disk cut out into a flamboyant pattern like that of the round brooch from the Victoria Cave ([Fig. 25]), and joined to a central stem ornamented with waved lines, was intended for suspension; possibly, as Mr. Carrington suggests, it may have been used for spinning. It is a remarkably fine example of Brit-Welsh or late Celtic art. The bone comb is of the same type as those from the Brit-Welsh caves of Yorkshire. It is evident, from Mr. Brown’s account, that there were distinct layers of occupation; but, unfortunately, the articles found in each were not separated from the rest. One armlet ([Fig. 31]), composed of a thin plate of bronze, and ornamented with a dotted-line pattern, is of the peculiar type which is characteristic of the bronze age.
The cave had also been used as a place of sepulture, for near “the pulpit rock,” and at a depth of five feet from the surface, a skeleton rested in the sitting posture which is so characteristic of neolithic interments in Europe. It had also been entered by man even before any of these accumulations. “In the south recess, behind and below any traces of man’s occupation, the diggers came upon a kind of flooring of tabular masses of breccia stretching almost across the cave, and on one side attached firmly to the wall,” beneath which rested, in the undisturbed clay, a deer’s horn, rudely sawn across and perforated by two holes.
Fig. 31.—Bronze Bracelet from Thor’s Cave.
Thor’s Cave, therefore, like the Victoria, has been occupied by man in the Brit-Welsh stage of the historic period, as well as in the bronze, and possibly in the neolithic ages.
Historic Value of Brit-Welsh Group of Caves.
The discovery that caves were used as habitations by men accustomed to the elegance of civilized life, not merely in Yorkshire, but in districts so far removed from each other as Staffordshire and the extreme north of Lancashire, during the fifth and sixth centuries, implies the pressure of a far-reaching calamity by which they were driven from their homes. It completes and rounds off the story of the social condition of the country during these troubled times, which is revealed in the sacked and burned Brit-Welsh cities and villas, as well as in the scanty records of the English invasion.
Subsequent investigation will probably show that caves were occupied at this time in every part of the country which was conquered by the English. In the upper stratum of Kent’s Hole, for example, near Torquay, similar articles, with the exception of the enamels, have been discovered. There, however, the occupation may have been considerably later than in the caves of Yorkshire, because the Roman civilization was not supplanted in Devonshire by the English until the beginning of the ninth century. The river Tamar then marked the frontier between the English, and the Brit-Welsh of the promontory of Cornwall, which represented the dominion of West Wales in the days of Ecgberht.[80]