Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/295

] {hwe|parts|ramparts}} of a camp, and on the summits of hills, and on the sides of the valleys where the soil is sufficiently porous to allow of drainage. These pits or "hut circles" are the remains of ancient habitations, dating as far back in this country as the Neolithic age, and in use, as proved by the discoveries at Standlake, and at Brent Knoll, near Burnham, as late as the time of the Roman occupation. Those at Fisherton, near Salisbury, explored by Mr. Adlam, and described by the late Mr. Stevens in 1866, may be taken as typical of the whole series. They occur singly and in groups, and are carried down to a depth of from seven to ten feet through the superficial gravel into the chalk, each pit or cluster of pits having a circular shaft for an entrance. At the bottom they vary from five to seven feet in diameter, and gradually narrow to two and a half or three feet in diameter in the upper parts. The floors were of chalk, sometimes raised in the centre, and the roofs had been made of interlaced sticks coated with clay imperfectly burned. The most interesting group consisted of three circular pits, and one semicircular, communicating with each other, with a shaft-like entrance on the north side.

The contents of these pits afford a clear insight into the condition of their ancient inhabitants. A spindle-whorl of burnt clay implies a knowledge of spinning, while two dressed lumps of chalk with holes drilled in them are considered by Mr. Stevens to be the weights which may have been used to give tension to the warp threads in weaving, like those found in the Swiss pile-dwellings. Two curious