Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 1.djvu/405

Rh as closely as if moulded to it, was the frame of a cap, consisting of a circular hoop, with two curved bars crossing each other in a knob at the top of the head. This knob, finishing in a ring, seems to have been intended for a feather, or some such military ensign. The rim at the base is nearly a perfect circle, and the bars are curved, so that the entire framework is itself globular. The bars are made apparently of some mixed metal, brass fused with a purer one; they are thin and pliable, and grooved; the knob and ring are brass, covered with verdigris, while the bars are smooth and free from rust. When first found, there was a complete chin chain, of this only three links remain, those next the cap very much worn. The skull is tinged at the top with green, from the pressure of the metal, and in other parts blackened, as though the main material of the cap had been felt, and the bars added to stiffen it. They are hardly calculated from their slightness to resist a sword cut, but the furrowed surface gives them a finish and proves that they must have been outside the felt. Nothing else whatever was found. A black tinge was distinctly traceable all round the earth in which the body lay." A Roman camp rises immediately over the spot where this relic was found, and large traces of Roman interment are found within a hundred yards of it.

Mr. C. R. Smith, referring to the minute of the proceedings of the Central Committee on October 9th, stated, that in compliance with the request of the Committee he had visited the site of the Roman remains at Bighton, in Hampshire, and in the following report detailed the result of his examination of them:—

"The field in which indications of Roman buildings had been noticed is called Bighton Woodshot, and is situate in the parish of Old Alresford, on the border of the parish of Bighton, within the district of Lanham Down. Until within about ten or twelve years, that portion of the field occupied by the buildings was a waste tract covered with bushes and brushwood. It is now arable land, but in consequence of the foundations of the buildings being so near the surface, is but of little worth to the agriculturist. Some years since many loads of flints and stones were carted away as building materials from the lower part of the field, when it is probable some portion of the foundations may have been destroyed, as the labourers state they found walls and rooms which, from their being roughly paved, and containing bones of horses, they supposed were the stables. From irregularities in the surface of the ground, as well as from vast quantities of flints and broken tiles, the foundations appear to extend over a space of, at least, one hundred square yards. Across about one half of this area, I directed two labourers to cut two transverse trenches, and ordered them to follow out the course of such walls as they might find, and lay them open without excavating any of the enclosed parts. The Rev. George Deane, the Rev. W. J. E. Rooke, and the Rev. Brymer Belcher, from time to time attended the excavations, and afforded me much assistance.

"In the course of a week's labour we have laid bare the walls of two rooms, each measuring 15 paces by 6$1⁄2$, and distant from each other about 20 paces; an octagonal room distant 26 paces from the nearer of the other rooms, and measuring 9 paces across; portions of a wall near the octagonal room, and of one about 20