Page:A book of the west; being an introduction to Devon and Cornwall.djvu/214

164 An example of one such, removed from the hole in which it was, is preserved in the Plymouth Municipal Museum.

One cooking-pot was found with a cross at the bottom of thicker clay, the object being to strengthen it, as experience showed that these pots always yielded first at the bottom. Some of the largest hut circles, those presumedly used in summer, had their kitchens separate from them, smaller huts, where the floors have been found thick with charcoal and fragments of this wretched fragile pottery.

The larger huts had their roofs supported by a central pole, and the socket-hole in which it stood has been found in some of them. In many huts also a flat, smooth stone bedded in the floor has been noticed, presumedly employed as a block on which to chop wood or fashion bone implements.

It is remarkable that one specimen only of a spindle-whorl has been discovered. No metal objects have so far been found in the Dartmoor hut circles. Implements of flint, sandstone, and granite abound; they are mostly scrapers, borers, knives, and rubbing or smoothing tools; a few arrow-heads have turned up, but these are mostly outside the huts, probably shot away in hunting.

The examination of the graves discloses the same kind of pottery, but with better finish and more elaborate ornamentation. Implements of stone and some bronze objects were yielded by the graves, and the evidence of the exploration of the Dartmoor remains has thus far connected them with the period of culture known as the late Neolithic and Early