Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 8.djvu/439



county of Lincoln presents to the antiquary a rich field of inquiry in its numerous vestiges of the early inhabitants of Britain, not less deserving of careful attention than the ancient remains in the southern counties. Whilst, however, the tumuli and earthworks of Wiltshire and other localities in the south have been examined with scientific care, and the remarkable interments of the Saxon period on the Kentish Downs are comparatively well known, through the investigations and the writings of some of our most able antiquaries, scarcely any inquiry has been directed to the numerous traces of those primeval tribes, by whom the north-eastern parts of our island were occupied, or any notice given of such peculiar features and characteristic appearances as may serve to throw light upon the most obscure period of our history.

The plough has levelled many tumili, without affording any opportunity for scientific observation, and no record of the evidence which might thence have been adduced, has been preserved. It is only by tracing the relics of primeval manufacture in clay or stone, as well as bronze, throughout the various counties of England, and by the careful comparison of the Celtic remains in Wiltshire and Dorset with those discovered in the more northern counties, that archaeologists can expect to arrive at any certain classification of the vestiges of those tribes by whom these islands were successively inhabited, or in any degree to disperse the obscurity in which their history and customs are involved. The VOL. VIII.