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archæology; but meagre as may be our evidence in this respect, it is rich in having preserved very nearly intact all the attributes by which we may link it on with the evidence of other lands and other social groups, and so interpret it as evidence which undoubtedly tells us of the early village life of our

ancestors.

First let us turn to the structural remains of the primitive village house. We read in the statistical accounts of the agricultural districts of Scotland that it is the custom in some districts for the people to retire in the summer to temporary residences or shealings for the purpose of herding the cattle at their summer pasturage. These shealings are commonly spoken of as beehive houses, and at one time were no doubt the perma

nent residences of early villagers. Dr. Mitchell has dealt with the subject of beehive houses in a very instructive manner in his excellent work, The Past in the Present; but there is one contribution to archeological science, preserved in their peculiar forms of construction, which he has not touched upon. The most interesting feature of these beehive houses to me is that they are often to be found, not singly and isolated, but joined together in groups. The first

group described by Dr. Mitchell* consists of two beehive houses, making two apartments opening into each other. "Though externally the two blocks looked round in their outline, and were, in fact, nearly so, internally the one apartment might be described as irregularly round, and the other as irregularly square." The floor space of one was about six feet square, and of the other six feet by nine. But this union of beehive huts is extended to a greater number than two. A remarkable instance of this is described and figured by Dr. Mitchell. It has several entrances, and would accommodate many families, who might be spoken of as living in one mound rather than under one roof." Looking at the ground plan of these beehive huts as figured by Dr. Mitchell (see next page), one cannot resist the conclusion that the cluster has grown up by accretion, as it were; that it has been added to by the beehivemen to meet the increased wants of the primitive family who resided in it. One other form of the beehive hut I must notice here. Dr. Mitchell says the ruins of it are still older, still more complex, than any to be seen in South Uist. interior is round, and measures 28 ft. in diameter. Within this area there are ten piers or pillars formed of blocks of dry-stone masonry. The stones are entirely undressed and of every possible size and shape, and there is no evidence of the use of any tool by the builders. This beehive house would accommodate from forty to fifty people.‡

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Its

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Now, what I conceive to be the next step in the archæological retrospect afforded by such evidence as that we have just considered, is to ascertain whether these clusters of beehive houses tell us anything of the men who inhabited them in primitive times-whether, in fact, they can be linked on to other phases of archaic life in order to reconstruct the broken picture of the past. I cannot conceive that our work is ended when we have measured them, and examined their material,

*Past in the Present, page 69. I have to acknowledge my indebtedness to the courteous kindness of Mr. Douglas, the publisher, for the loan of the blocks illustrating this paper.

+Past in the Present, page 64. Ibid. pp. 68-69.

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hold operations, and may be termed the house space. If the family is more than ordinarily well off the house group may consist of more than four huts.* Of these larger groups we read in the Indian Antiquary, that some of the houses in the Himalaya villages extend to a great length, and several generations often live under one roof-tree, additions, with separate entrances, forming a common front verandah, having been made from time to time.t

Here, then, we get the clue to the archæological reason of the grouping together of the beehive houses of Scotland. The "fiftypeople" spoken of in a general way by Dr. Mitchell as capable of occupying them, become definitely recognized as the "family" of archaic society-the unit of the primitive village. What this family is may be distinctly known by applying to the facts of Hindu village life. I will quote two definitions of the Hindu family as specially showing how it quadrates with the facts we have obtained from the structural remains of the beehive houses of Scotland.

The Hindu family lives together joint and divided, generation after generation. Fathers, sons, uncles, cousins, with all their wives, widows, and children, collateral branches as well as those in the direct line, have a right to reside, and often do reside, in the same family mansion.‡

Ward says: "A grandfather with his children and grandchildren, in a direct line amounting to nearly fifty persons, may sometimes be found in one family."§

This is the self-same family that in the archaic villages of England and Scotland resided in village communities, and cultivated their lands in the communal holdings which Sir Henry Maine has made known to us, and innumerable relics of which exist *Sir John Phear's Aryan Village, pp. 7-10. + Indian Antiquary, v. 161.

Calcutta Review, vol lii. (1871), p. 249. §"Tugunnat'ha-Tarkku-Punchanund, who lived to be about 117 years of age, and was well known as the most learned man of his time, had a family of seventy or eighty individuals, among whom were his sons and daughters, grandsons, great-grandsons, and a greatgreat-grandson. In this family, for many years, when at a wedding or on any other occasion, the ceremony called the sraddha was to be performed, they called the old folks and presented their offerings to them."Ward's Hindoos, vol. i. p. 196.

among the land customs of the municipalities and manors of England. To have traced back these land customs to their origin as survivals of the system of agriculture pursued by primitive village communities, is a very important work in the history of early village life in England; but how much more important, how much more complete, is the archaic picture we can produce when, in addition to the primitive land customs, we can trace back also the primitive homesteads of the village!

It is not to be supposed that the structural remains of early village homesteads in Britain would be preserved to a great extent down to modern times. It must not be forgotten that the beehive houses of Scotland exist now, and are sometimes inhabited now.* Nowhere else in Britain do we find such a complete survival of ancient institutions in modern times. But, turning to the archæological remains of early Britain, we shall be able to see how far the evidence as to group-habitations, in distinction from single dwellings, is borne out. Professor Boyd Dawkins, for instance, in his Early Man in Britain, remarks :—

In various parts of the country are to be seen clusters of circular depressions, within the ramparts of a camp, and on the summits of hills and on the sides of 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 Handlake 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. 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 (p. 267).

The hut habitations discovered at Holyhead by the Hon. W. O. Stanley afford us very important evidence. In many parts of Anglesey are to be seen, in rough and cultivated districts of heathy ground, over which the plough has never passed, certain low mounds, which on examination are

Cf. Journal of Arch. Ass., xviii, 116.

*

ound to be formed of a circular wall of stones, but are now covered with turf and dwarf gorse or fern. These walls generally enclose a space of from fifteen to twenty feet in diameter, with a door-way or opening always facing the south-west, and having two large upright stones, about four or five feet high, as door-posts. These sites of ancient habitations are usually in clusters of five or more, but at Ty Mawr, in Holyhead, they form a considerable village of more than fifty huts, still to be distinctly traced. Mr. Stanley describes these dwellings as placed without any regular plan, and some have smaller circular rooms attached without a separate external entrance. Here, I think, the modern terminology of "room" has led the explorer into an error. He ascribes the use of these attached rooms to dog-kennels; but I do not hesitate iu thinking them to have been the group-habitations of primitive communities.

King, in his Munimenta Antiqua (p. 12), describes "the remains and traces of the most antient dwellings of the first people" of England

to have been mere clusters of little round or oval foundations of stone, on which were erected small structures, with conical roofs or coverings, which formed the very circumscribed dwellings and rude hovels of the first settlers of Britain.

Grimspound,* in Devonshire, within a circular enclosure, says Fosbrooke, situated in a marsh, exhibits a fortified village of circular stone houses. Specimens of these huts and dwellings are to be found in every part of Dartmoor. The huts are circular, the stones are set on their edge and placed closely together, so as to form a secure foundation for the superstructure-whether they were wattle, turf, stone, or other material. These hut circles measure twelve to thirty feet in diameter. The single foundation is most common, but some have a double circle. A very perfect specimen is found in the corner of a most remarkable enclosure. The hut is in a state comparatively perfect. It appears to have been shaped like a beehive, the wall being formed of large stones and turf, so placed as to terminate in a point. The circumference is twenty yards. Both the kinds found in the Orkneys appear to have existed in Dartmoor. With very few exceptions, these ancient dwellings are found in groups, either surrounded by rude enclosures or not. On the banks of the Walkham, near Merivale Bridge, is a very extensive village containing huts of various dimensions, built on a hill sloping towards the south-west (Fosbrooke, Encyclopedia of Antiquities, i. 100).

Now separate from these descriptions the portions which are incidental to the old style

Quoting Rowland (Mona Antiqua, pp. 25- of antiquarian writings, and we have, I think, 27), King goes on to narrate :

I have oft observed in many places in this island, and in other countries, clusters of little round and oval foundations, whose very irregularities speak their antiquity. On the hills near Porthaethwy there are prodigious plenty of them; and upon some heaths the very make and figure, and other circumstances of these rude, mishapen holds, seem to indicate that they were the retreating places of those first people (who migrated here), when they began the work of clearing and opening the country-very necessity obliging those people then, as custom does some to this day, to choose such movable abodes; and no one can well deny these to have been little dwellings and houses.+

Rowland says that the British houses were little round cabins; yet they were generally in clusters of three and four, which it seems served them for rooms and separate lodg. ments. And sometimes many were included together within the compass of one square or court (Mona Antiqua, p. 246).

* Arch. Journ., xxiv. 229. † Mun. Antiq., i. 14–15.

evidence of the group-habitations with which I am dealing. Not to unnecessarily lengthen these descriptions, let me note that the researches of Dr. Guest into the remains of the early settlements in Britain led him to exactly the same conclusion as that arrived at by Professor Boyd Dawkins; and that without, I venture to think, looking at the question from the same standpoint as I have done. Dr. Guest in one of his many papers, says of the Hampton Down Camp, "that the divisions of the settlement are still distinctly visible each family or clan had its allotted space, enclosed by mound."+ This is a conclusion arrived at entirely from the archæological remains, and not from a study

of archaic institutions.

Next month I propose in continuation to give an account of some curious building * See Journ. Arch. Ass., xviii. 119. See also Journ. Arch. Association, xiii. 105.

customs, and to explain the parallel communal habitations of primitive society. (To be continued.)

Ancient Barrow in the 3sle of Wight.

N tempestuous weather, working on a very bleak spot on the Middle West Down, Nunwell, Isle of Wight, facing the north and east (by kind permission from Lady Oglander, the owner of the property) I removed about fifteen inches of earth from the present surface, on a spot I had previously marked, feeling convinced from its peculiar shape (once, no doubt, an extensive mound or tumulus, but now flattened) and its faint outline of minced chalk, forming a large circle, barely perceptible on the ground, now ploughed up for future cultivation, that something worthy of investigation lay hidden. By compass I made my trenches due north, south, east, and west, commencing to excavate from the north to the centre, when I quickly came upon a most compact body of flints of fair size, so placed, that when the whole surface was uncovered it bore the exact shape of a huge mushroom head; for, upon examination, I found it equal on all sides from the apex to the outside of the circle remarkably well put together; in fact like a solid paved causeway, measuring in diameter twenty-two feet and a half, and nearly two feet six inches, the depth in the centre of the mound, narrowing down to twelve inches. Under this extraordinary mass of flints and exactly in the centre of the circle, there was a round stone (not flint), as if placed to mark the centre, and act as a guide round which the flints were to be placed to form a proper circle. Close to this stone was an urn, with two handles, standing upright, well formed, five inches and three-quarters high, and eight inches wide, apparently unbaked clay, with very rude diamond-shaped markings all over its outside. It only contained earth, and a few chips of flint. On the left side of this urn, and touching it, I found a human skull (the

back of the head due east) in fair preservation, the jaws close to the rim of the urn; and on the right side of the skull, immediately over the ear, a hole two inches long and nearly half-an-inch wide at spots marked, cleanly cut in the bone, as if by a sharp weapon. Upon further removing the earth, I laid bare the skeleton of a well-grown man, appearing to have been buried in a sitting position; most of the ribs and other small bones had crumbled away-the body being so placed and doubled up as to bring the knees level with the chest. This fact suggests the idea that it is the grave of an Ancient Briton. Close under the jaws I found a flint flake corresponding with the shape of the hole in the skull, and which I consider might have caused the death-wound, having, as it were, fallen out of the skull as the body mouldered away. The skeleton lay due east and west. I could not discover any remnant of metal of any description, but on either side of the body were two smooth stones, the size and shape of an egg-one a flint, the other a shore pebble. Between the skeleton and the flints was a layer of small bits of chalk about two inches deep similar to the substance which surrounds the outer circle, and which had evidently been removed to form an outer trench, from which no doubt was raised the original mound over the bed of flints. The outer circle of broken chalk measured nearly one hundred and eight feet in circumference.

My labourer who assisted me in my five days and a half hard work—an old experienced feller of timber, and used to measurement-computed with myself that the amount of flints over this grave could not be less than one hundred tons, in one compact mass. I trenched in various parts of this mound, N. S. E. W., but could only find the one skeleton.

I also opened trenches on other spots showing tokens of tumuli. I found that they had evidently been disturbed at some remote period, and bereft of any human remains they once had. In one instance, about eighteen inches below the surface, appeared a considerable quantity of flints, greatly scattered, but put together in a similar way to those in the mound I have fully described.

JOHN THORP.

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