human civilisation, give some indications as to the characteristics of their Neolithic prototypes. Nay, we may even venture to see in the mud houses that are found in the county, even at the present day, some indications of the materials which primitive man could employ, when occasion required. Building even with stones and clay requires considerable skill, so that the most ancient artificial shelters were doubtless made with the minimum of wall, by digging pits or holes in the ground, as in the subterranean dwellings of Caithness and the pit-dwellings of Wiltshire. As time went on, and greater skill was acquired, huts of simple form -circular, oval, or rectangular-would be built of earth, earth and stones, stones mortared with clay, or unmortared stone. The roof-of boughs, rushes, willows, osiers, and the like-would be supported by a pole rising from the middle of the hut. The Rev. S. BaringGould informs me that in some of the hut-dwellings on Dartmoor, traces have been discovered of the hole in the floor which formed the socket for such a pole. These dwellings and groups of dwellings were probably protected by dykes of earth, such as are still used in the county as substitutes for hedges, thickly overgrown with an impenetrable covering of briars, brambles, and above all gorse, which, when in bloom, is still one of the most characteristic features of the landscape in some parts of Carnarvonshire, notably the Lleyn peninsula. The land was probably grazed, and later on tilled, by groups of the inhabitants in common. The upland pastures were grazed in summer; while in winter, for greater shelter, the sheep and cattle were driven to the valleys and lowlands. It was this ancient practice that probably survived in the "Hafod" and "Hendref" system of farming of later days. Cooking was chiefly carried on in the open air, just as baking still is occasionally in some parts of the county, when the house has no oven. The fuel consisted largely of brambles, gorse, and dried cow-dung. Water was boiled by means of "cooking-stones," heated in the

fire and dropped into the water to be boiled. At the approach of danger from enemies, the inhabitants would gather their flocks and herds into their gorse-enclosed fortresses, which were situated in the most inaccessible places known to them: such as a lofty height, or a seacliff that was difficult of access. In addition to the game which they caught, and the produce of their farms, they probably ate, especially in times of scarcity, the various non-poisonous wild berries; and, when they lived within easy distance of the sea, shell-fish, sandeels, and edible seaweed.

Turning now to the environment of Early Man in death, it seems probable that some of the conditions. and distinctions of the living were here again reflected. The insignificant dead, if buried at all, were doubtless buried with little ceremony; but the illustrious dead appear to have been buried in the nearest counterparts to their living abodes. Where the latter was a cave, the burial appears to have been made in a cave also. Where no natural cave was available, artificial sepulchral grottoes were hollowed out, wherever the nature of the rock-such as soft sandstone or chalk-rendered this possible. If the rock was unsuitable, and large slabs of stone, as in Carnarvonshire, were available, these were grouped together to form chambers, the interstices between the stones being filled with clay and rubble, and the whole structure covered with earth. As in life the living dwelt together, the same chamber was used for the burial of several bodies, and it had an opening for the purpose of new burials, generally on the east side. The body was often buried in a crouchedup attitude. The classical essay on the manipulation of the stones of early Megalithic structures is that by Frederick III, King of Denmark, written in 1857, and reprinted in English in the Archæologia Cambrensis for 1862. In this admirable essay, stress is laid on the stimulus to the acquisition of skill in stone-working given to Early Man by his intensely alert psychological condition in reference to stone, this alertness arising

from the pressure of necessity. The author of the essay suggests that the shaping of the stone was probably effected by means of an ingenious use of water, fire, wedges, and wooden mallets; and that it was transported to its destination by means of long poles, to each side of which leathern ropes could be attached, so that a number of men would be thus enabled to co-operate in the work. The coping-stone in this manner would be carried up an inclined plane of earth, and skilfully tilted into its place on the supporting

stones.

There is an excellent account of ancient methods of burial by Mr. J. Romilly Allen, in the Archæologia Cambrensis for 1900, in which he summarises the characteristics of the various epochs, thus enabling us to form a vivid picture of some features of prehistoric life in Carnarvonshire. In Neolithic times, the prevalent form of the mounds which covered the cromlech was oval; later on, circular mounds became common, notably about the period of the introduction of bronze implements. It was not unusual, in the case of one of these circular mounds, to build a wall around its border, and then to surround the mound and the wall with a ditch and a circle of standing stones. This is thought to be the origin of some, if not all, of the stone circles found in Wales and elsewhere. For some reason or other, it appears that in Brittany, where alignments are frequent, stone circles are rare. At the period when bronze was being introduced, it appears that the older sepulchral chamber of the cromlech stage was often replaced by a "cist," or stone chest, placed in the centre of the mound, but the stone circle was still retained. Even in the Neolithic period, bodies were not invariably buried in stone chambers or stone chests: sometimes they were buried in long mounds in the bare earth, and sometimes without even a mound. When urns are found in Neolithic graves, they are, as Mr. Allen points out, generally in the form of a shallow bowl, with a rounded bottom, but a taller variety is also sometimes

seen, which is not unlike the "drinking-cups" of the Bronze period. Sometimes, these urns are ornamented with alternate bands of pattern and plain surface, and this type of ornamentation, according to Mr. Allen, survived into the Bronze epoch. In the Later Stone Age, however, the ornamentation was made by means of a pointed stick, while in the Bronze period the lines were made by means of a string impressed on the soft clay. The weapons that are found buried with the dead consist, in the case of Neolithic burials, of polished stone hammers and axe-heads (mounted at times in hafts of deer-horn), stone arrow-heads (both leaf-shaped and barbed), made, as a rule, either of flint or rockcrystal. There are also found flint knives, lance-heads, daggers, flakes, and bone-piercers. It appears, too, that the graves sometimes contain personal ornaments that are miniature copies of stone axes and hammers, necklaces made of shells, and the canine teeth of animals perforated, as well as rings of stone and shell. When skulls are found, they are generally dolichocephalic, and the shin-bones are often of a flattened. variety. The existence of the aforementioned "cromlechau" in Carnarvonshire makes it highly probable that the substratum of the population contains a large admixture of pre-Celtic stock, derived from Neolithic, and possibly even earlier, ancestors.

Towards the end of the long epoch generally known as the Later Stone Age, bronze began to find its way into Britain, navigation being by this time well established. In his Rambles in Bosnia and Herzogovina, Dr. Munro points out that canoes made of trunks of trees hollowed out were known from the earliest Neolithic times. The canoe found by Dr. Griffith Griffith, of Taltreuddyn, on the bank of Llyn Llydaw, is probably the work of someone acquainted with the use of metallic instruments, and has affinities with the Scottish specimens, with square stern and sharp-pointed bow. Bronze was not necessarily introduced into Britain by warlike invaders; but there can be little

doubt that the rapid extension of its use in this island was closely associated with the spread of those brachycephalic Aryan Celts, who introduced into Britain, and later into Ireland, the Goidelic form of Celtic speech. The very use of metallic weapons and implements must have greatly aided these men in extending their sway and in maintaining their possessions. It is not necessary to suppose that these or later invaders ruthlessly exterminated the previous inhabitants, or even made personal slaves of them. The position of the Goidelic, and later on of the Brythonic, invaders was more analogous to that of the Hebrew conquerors among the Canaanitish people, as described in the Book of Judges. There were probably settlements of the invaders and of the previous inhabitants side by side; the latter in various ways and in different degrees acknowledging the overlordship of the former. As Principal Rhys has suggested, some such arrangement may be reflected in the account of the "Coraniaid" in the story of Lludd and Llevelys, even in the late form which it has in the Red Book of Hergest. The present writer has also (in his article on "The Early Settlers of Brecon") given this as a possible explanation of the fact that the proper names in the Latin portions of bilingual Ogam inscriptions are written in their Brythonic rather than their Goidelic form. The adoption of a Celtic in place of the pre-Celtic tongue in Wales points to the political and economic, if not the numerical predominance of the invaders; but the echoes of pre-Celtic speech, as later on of Goidelic, may well have lingered for a long time in the mountain fastnesses of Carnarvonshire. Some features of Neolithic civilisation, too, may have survived more widely than others, owing to their suitability for the locality and its population. The higher social strata of the invaders doubtless used bronze weapons and implements, and adopted the practice of cremation to a far greater extent than the humbler inhabitants. Cremation, as Dr. Munro in his Rambles in Bosnia and Herzogovina points out, was a practice that first arose