་ Evans, Rev. G. Eyre, Tanybryn, Aberystwith Bishop, His Honour, Judge, Dolgarreg, Llandovery Camber-Williams, Rev. Canon R., M.A., Parade, Carmarthen Poole-Hughes, Rev. W. W., M.A., The College, Williams, Rev. R., M.A., Vicarage, Llandilo Evans, Rev. A. F., M. A., Vicarage, Neath Harold Hughes, Esq. Mrs. Johnes. W. Spurrell, Esq. Rev. C. Chidlow. L. J. Roberts, Esq. Rev. C. Chidlow. Geo. Griffiths, Esq. Rev. Preb. Garnons-Williams. General Business.-Several matters had been brought before the chairman of committee in the course of the year which required immediate attention. 1. Owing to the large number of local subscribers of a guinea at Brecon, the January and April parts of the Journal had run short, and in order to supply the deficiency he had telegraphed to the publisher to print an extra fifty copies. This had been approved at the Shrewsbury meeting, and it comes before the members with that sanction. 2. A letter had been forwarded to him relating to the restoration of St. Mary's, Haverfordwest; the reply to this he had deferred to the Annual Meeting. 3. The excavation of Tre'r Ceiri by Mr. Baring Gould and Mr. Burnard, approved of by the spring committee meeting, bad necessi tated the payment of a suggested grant; before the Annual Meeting this had been paid by the chairman, partly from the funds of the Association and partly from those of the Tre'r Ceiri Fund. 4. A grant towards the excavation of Clegyr Foia, promised some two years ago to Mr. Baring Gould, having remained unpaid owing to the death of the late Treasurer, had been also paid by the chairman; and he asked for confirmation and repayment. 5. The Mostyn MS. 158, a Welsh history of Wales, by Ellis. Griffith, in the Mostyn Hall Library, being thought by him a matter suitable for publication by the Association, the chairman had approached Lord Mostyn on the subject, and rough estimates of the cost of transcription and printing had been prepared by a small sub-committee appointed at Shrewsbury; but the committee had not yet been able to draw up any definite scheme, and placed the matter before the Association in the rough way that alone was then possible. 6. The committee recommend that the Editor's salary shall in future be £50 per annum, and that an honorarium of £5 per annum be paid to the general secretary for South Wales. The committee recommends that a sum of £30 shall be voted towards the Tre'r Ceiri Excavation Fund. Place of Annual Meeting for 1904.-The committee suggests that Cardigan shall be chosen for the place of meeting for next year. The adoption of the Report was proposed, seconded, and carried unanimously. FRIDAY, AUGUST 21st, 1903. PUBLIC MEETING. The Evening Meeting, which was very largely attended, was held in the Board Schoolroom, in Snowdon Street, 8.30 P.M. The Ven. Archdeacon Thomas presided, and the attendance included Mr. Lloyd George, M.P. The closest attention was paid to a masterly paper by Professor Lloyd, and to the joint report of the Rev. S. Baring Gould and Mr. Robert Burnard on the recent excavations of Tre'r Ceiri. Professor Lloyd's paper on "Mediæval Eifionydd" came first. Mr. Edward Owen, in the discussion which followed the Paper on Tre'r Ceiri, said, while accepting all the facts-the "finds"-that had resulted from the exploration, he disagreed with Mr. Baring Gould and Mr. Burnard in the deductions they had drawn. It seemed to him that because some fragments of Roman pottery were found in some of the cyttiau, they wanted to infer that the fortress was erected in Roman times. He did not think that that conclusion was necessarily the correct one. The conclusion would have been But strengthened had nothing but Roman pottery been found there, and it would have been difficult to refute it in a reasonable way. there were other finds, of an earlier age--stone weapons, for instance. It might be argued, however, that those weapons were used by a later people, and that it did not necessarily follow that the earlier people erected the fortress. That was true in itself. But they had to remember that, if they had to regard Tre'r Ceiri as post-Roman, or at any rate as having been erected in the time of the Romans, they had to get rid of this formidable argument--that it was impossible for them to imagine such a people as the Romans permitting the construction of such a fortress at Tre'r Ceiri. The walls were such that they could be easily seized. It was not to be regarded as probable, therefore, that the Romans, who were a military people, would build such a fortress. Then, again, there were a number of fortresses similar to Tre'r Ceiri scattered about the country, notably in Scotland, and it had never been suggested that there was anything Roman about them. In fact, they had been ascribed to an earlier date, so that if the construction of Tre'r Ceiri was to be brought into the Christian era, he did not see how they could possibly adhere to the opinion that the other fortress belonged to an earlier period. Concluding, Mr. Owen quoted from the presidential address of Principal Rhys to the Anthropological Section of the British Association at Southport, in 1900, the following:-" Guided by the kinship of the name of the Tuatha De Danann on the Irish side of the sea, and that of the sons of Don on this side, I may mention that the Mabinogion placed the sons of Don on the sea of North Wales in what is now Carnarvonshire. that district we have at least three great prehistoric sites, all on the First comes the great stronghold on the top of Penmaenmawr; then we have the huge mound of Dinas Dinlle, eaten into at present by the sea south-west of the western mouth of the Menai Straits; and, lastly, there is the extensive fortification of Tre'r Ceiri, overlooking Dinlle from the heights of the Eifl. By its position Tre'r Ceiri belongs to the sons of Don, and by its name it seems to me to belong to the Picts, which comes, I believe, to the same thing." coast. facts. In Mr. Burnard, replying, said it was exceedingly gratifying to them, especially to himself, that Mr. Owen did not question their That was, Mr. Owen quite believed they found the objects they said they found on Tre'r Ceiri. For that crumb of comfort, he was exceedingly obliged. Mr. Owen, however, read the writing of those "finds" in a somewhat different light. He must admit that he had made some mistakes in his time, especially in matters connected with archæology, but neither Mr. Baring Gould nor himself claimed infallibility. It seemed to him, however, that the writing was very distinct though not distinct enough perhaps, for them to be able to fix the erection of Tre'r Ceiri to a century. They, unfortunately, found no iron-nothing with a date on it; but if they looked at the corroded state of the iron and the position in which the iron objects were found on the true floor of the huts-they were bound to admit that those "finds" belonged to a period when iron was used, viz., the Iron Age. Then, again, Mr. Owen complained that they laid too much stress on the very minute particles of Roman pottery which they found at Tre'r Ceiri. The fact was, they did not lay any very great stress upon that, and if their report conveyed that impression then it should be amended-to that extent, at any rate. They had evidence sufficient for their purpose in the fibula, and in the curious melon-shaped porcellanous beads of Egyptian make, which were characteristic of the Early Roman period. Mr. Owen had also referred to the stone implements which they found at Tre'r Ceiri. They found rubbers (or pounders) and pebbles, also an implement which they considered to have been used as a strike-a-light, as well as sling-stones. Similar stone implements had been found in all the hill-forts that they had been exploring of the same Iron period-the same Late Celtic period; and they knew that stone extended down into the Metal Age in the same way that bronze extended down to the Iron Age. It was a mistake, therefore, for Mr. Owen to assume that they laid so much stress on the minute particles of pottery which they found in the course of their explorations. They took the objects as a whole, and said that they belonged to the first century of our era. These relics, he might add, had been seen by several distinguished antiquaries, and they had confirmed Mr. Baring Gould and himself in the conclusions they had drawn. Concluding, Mr. Burnard gave some valuable advice as to the course to be followed when the explorations were resumed next year. Mr. Romilly Allen said he had always taken a great interest in the great prehistoric fortress of Tre'r Ceiri, and he had for many years, in season and out of season, urged on the committee the advisability of excavating the cyttiau. He thought they had made themselves appear ridiculous in the past, in climbing the hills to see these forts, and coming down again without adding to their previous knowledge of the place: when, by raising a small fund, they opened up the possibility of solving the problems which these hill-forts presented in a short time. In this case some ten days had been devoted to the problem of Tre'r Ceiri, and he thought, despite Mr. Owen, it had been solved. He happened to write to Mr. Baring Gould before the work of exploration began, and offered to bet him his bottom dollar that Tre'r Ceiri would be found to belong to the Late Celtic or Early Iron Age, and the "finds" enumerated in the report now showed that he was right. Referring to the "finds," the speaker reminded the meeting that iron bill-hooks, which he said were characteristic of the Later Celtic period, had been found at the Oppidum at Hunsbury, near Northampton, at the Glastonbury lakevillage, and elsewhere; that blue beads were believed to have been manufactured in Egypt and imported into Britain about the beginning of the Christian era; and that pendants with the wheel and three curved spokes, like the three legs of the Isle of Man, had been found in association with Late Celtic objects in Berkshire, Kingsholm, near Gloucester, and other places. The bringing down the date of the erection of Tre'r Ceiri to so late a period suggestedobserved Mr. Romilly Allen, in conclusion-some interesting problems as to whether it was intended as a defence against the Romans. At any rate, a work of this magnitude could only have been put up to oppose a well-organised and powerful foe; and it was highly inprobable that such a foe could have existed either in the Bronze or the Stone Age. The Rev. D. Lewis said he did not believe that Tre'r Ceiri was ever a habitation of permanent or even temporary abode. He thought the place was erected for pastoral purposes, and for nothing else. Mr. Pepyat Evans asked whether it could really be argued that the "finds" in a hut could be held to prove the date of the hut in the same way that the "find" of an urn proved the date of burial. It seemed to be clear that, however early the huts might have been constructed, they might have been occupied by Late Celts in the Early Roman period. The question raised by the last speaker was not answered, and the discussion closed. With these discussions, conducted in scholarly fashion, and an excellent report by the Secretary (the Rev. Canon Trevor Owen) and Chairman, of the status of the Association, the meeting was brought to a close, with a well-deserved expression of thanks to the local committee and secretaries (Messrs. T. E. Morris and C. E. Breese) for their efforts to make the Fifty Seventh Annual Meeting a success. Altogether, the Portmadoc meeting proved to be one of the most, if it was not quite the most, successful ever held in connection with the Association, much of the credit for this being due to the two local secretaries just mentioned; while the hospitality accorded to the members during their brief stay, as our readers will have observed, was unbounded. |