Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 8.djvu/201

 ON TllK " 15i:iA;ir DITCHES. i | .i ON THE "BELCJIC DITCHES," AND THE rilOlJABLE DATE OF STONEHENGE. The lines of ancient earth-work, which in various parts of England intersect the country, seem to admit of a division into three classes, — Bi-itish roads, Roman roads, and Boundary lines. When tolerably well i:)reserved, these different kinds of earth-work may, in most cases, be distinguished from each other without much difficulty, and the British road appears as a ditch, with a low mound on each side of it, the Roman road as a mound simply, and the Boundary-line as a ditch, with a mound on one side only. As we have no reason to believe that the Britons constructed artificial roads before the arrival of the Romans, and as we know from Caesar that the country was densely peopled, we might expect to find their lines of communication worn into hollows. The accumulations of filth and refuse, which would neces- sarily result from a large traffic, when thrown aside for the greater convenience of passage, would soon form continuous mounds, and perhaps the more readily, inasmuch as such mounds might, in certain localities, ho usefully employed as fences. There are many bye-ways in the west of Phigland, which, if turfed over, would be no unfair representatives of the British roads that still exist upon the downs of Wiltshire. Our ancient boundary-lines seem also to admit of a three- fold division. There are, first, the boundary-lines, which defined the territories of the British tribes before the Roman Conquest ; secondly, those which were made by the Romanised Britons ; and thirdly, the march-dikes thrown up by our ancestors, after the English colonisation of the island. The last of these three classes has sometimes attracted the atten- i tion of the historian ; but the second, though for several reasons particularly interesting, has not, I believe, been hitherto noticed ; and, if we except the speculations of Stukeley and Warton with respect to the " Belgic ditches,'* I am not aware that even the ancient British boundary-lines have as yet been made the subject of critical investigation. According to Stukeley, the Belga), as they gradually expelled the British tribes, who preceded them, constructed four