Page:Palæolithic Man and Terramara Settlements in Europe.djvu/445

Rh deer and oxen, had been split for the extraction of their marrow.

Most of these relics were found in the lower stratum of the lake-mud deposit beneath the platform, having apparently been dropped into the water from the hands of their original owners. It may also be observed that among the deposits of sand and clay, which had subsequently accumulated over the platform to a depth of 5 metres, were found some Roman objects.

The precise facts collected during this investigation are not sufficiently copious to enable us to speak definitely of the exact nature of this settlement. The large tree-trunk logs on which the habitable platform rested were not, it seems, supported on piles ; and, hence, the investigator was inclined to regard it as a floating island or raft which rose and fell with the fluctuations of the water in the lake. Such a suggestion is by no means improbable, nor unparalleled in the history of archæological researches, as is proved by the discovery of a floating station in a peat-bog in the island of Zeeland (Denmark), supposed to be even earlier than the age of the kjökkenmöddings (Congrès Préhistorique de France, 1905, p. 244). See p. 279.

Terramara at Taranto.

In 1899 Professor Quintino Quagliati discovered a terramara settlement at Taranto. The site lies a little to the north-west of the city, at a place called Scoglio del Tonno, where the rock was being quarried for building purposes. Quagliati observed that lying over the surface of this rock there were artificial deposits of earth, some 2 metres thick, which contained industrial remains and other evidence of human occupation. After some tentative diggings he ascertained that they were disposed in three separate beds of stratified materials, each representing a different phase of Italian culture. The upper bed contained the remains of huts, fragments of a light yellowish pottery with geometrical decorations, recognised as belonging to proto-Corinthian types, and a human figurine or goddess, said to be of Mycenæan origin, but which can be paralleled by several figurines found in the Neolithic station of Butmir in Bosnia (see PI. LXVII). The bed immediately below this was of considerable thickness, and in it were found