Page:Prehistoric Britain.djvu/228

220 grain—no doubt storing-places in connection with the perishable huts.

Another inhabited site, showing defensive arrangements somewhat similar to Worlebury, is that on St. David's Head, Pembrokeshire, which has been recently subjected to some spade exploration. It had been long known that the extreme end of this headland was strongly fortified by a dry-stone rampart which cut it off from the mainland, and that within the area thus protected were the remains of hut-circles; but as to their age, or who were their constructors, no one seemed to have the remotest idea. The result of the excavations was to show that they belonged to the early Iron Age. The objects discovered on their sites consist of hammer-stones of beach pebbles, flint flakes, scrapers and cores, sharpening stones, spindle-whorls, perforated discs of slate, part of a jet armlet, fragments of rude pottery, variously coloured beads, and a few articles of non, but no Roman relics.

Few indications of ancient inhabited sites have been hitherto recorded in low-lying districts where cultivation has been practised from time immemorial. Two reasons may be assigned for the apparent absence of hut-dwellings in such localities. In the first place they were constructed, not of stones, but of timbers and clay wattling over depressions more or less deeply excavated in the soil; and in the second place the structural