to the new organ and organ chamber of the Parish Church. He founded the Mortimer Charity, the income of which, about £20, is distributed yearly by the trustees at Christmas, and the Mortimer Scholarship Fund, which provides for the maintenance of two Broughton Gifford children at the secondary schools. By his first wife, a native of North Bradley, he had fourteen children.

Obit. notice, Wiltshire Times, April 5th, 1924.

WILTSHIRE BOOKS, PAMPHLETS,
AND ARTICLES.

[N.B.-This list does not claim to be in any way exhaustive. The Editor appeals to all authors and publishers of pamphlets, books, or views in any way connected with the county, to send him copies of their works, and to editors of papers, and members of the Society generally, to send him copies of articles, views, or portraits, appearing in the newspapers.]

The Early Iron Age Inhabited Site at All Cannings Cross Farm, Wiltshire. A Description of the Excavations, and Objects found by Mr. and Mrs. B. H. Cunnington, 1911-1922. By M. E. Cunnington (Mrs. B. H. Cunnington), Devizes. Printed and published by George Simpson & Co. 1923.

Cloth, 4to, pp. 204. 54 plates, including a General View of All Cannings Cross, Looking East, as frontispiece.

It is not too much to say of this book that it is the most important separate work published on the Prehistoric Antiquities of Wiltshire since the great series of "Excavations in Cranborne Chase" came to an end. It is universally acknowledged that in those volumes Gen. Pitt Rivers set a standard which it has been the aim of the archæologists of the 20th century to live up to in their researches. The two volumes on the Glastonbury Lake Village, and Mr. Curle's work on the Roman Fort at Newstead were worthy descendants in the same line, and the goodly company is now reinforced by Mrs. Cunnington's exhaustive account of All Cannings. The results of the four years' digging on this site between 1911 and 1922 are here set forth with a wealth of illustration and careful description which the remarkable character of the objects discovered deserved. The whole of these finds are now well displayed in the Society's Museum at Devizes, and the latter portion of this volume is a glorified catalogue of the collection, in which every object of any importance is excellently illustrated. Of these the large series of pottery is chiefly shown by photographs, but of the other

objects of bone, chalk, stone, iron, bronze, &c., the majority are reduced from very accurate full size pen drawings by Mr. C. W. Pugh. The relationship of the various objects with those found on other sites not only in England but on the Continent is exhaustively discussed, and chapter and verse are given for the records of similar finds in the writings of English and Foreign archæologists.

As to the age of the settlement, Mrs. Cunnington writes:-"Taken as a whole the evidence at All Cannings Cross points to an overlap from an earlier to a later phase, a period of transition, that is to say, from Hallstatt to La Tene I. period. That being so, a range in actual years from about 500 to 300 B.C. may be considered probable in the present state of our knowledge. The earliest objects found were the fragment of a socketed bronze celt, and a bronze razor of the same type as that found by Gen. Pitt Rivers in South Lodge Camp, Rushmore, which led him to assign a Bronze Age date to that camp. The latest objects were the La Tene I. brooches, and the ring-headed pins of the same period. The absence of rotary querns, and the fact that the decorative motives of the pottery were similar to the earliest found at Hengistbury and entirely different from those found at Glastonbury and Hunsbury, point to the settlement as being of earlier date than either of these well-known Iron Age sites, in other words, earlier than the full La Tene period. As yet no other site has been discovered in England, in which the whole of the remains can be ascribed to this, the Hallstatt age. It is this that gives its peculiar importance to All Cannings Cross. The various grounds on which Mr. Crawford and others have argued that a fresh invasion of England from the Continent took place at the end of the Bronze Age are considered in their bearing on the All Cannings site, and Mrs. Cunnington suggests that the small square camps, such as South Lodge, Martin Down, and Handley Hill, excavated by Pitt Rivers and assigned by him to the Late Bronze Age, were really, as the presence in these camps and at All Cannings alike of the same 'Fingertip' urns goes to prove," rather of the Early Iron than of the Late Bronze Age, and that they were alike settlements of the new "Hallstatt" colonists. The book is full of interesting observations and suggestions. Mr. Lyell, who analysed the charcoal, found that one piece was from the wood of the Holm Oak (Quercus ilex), a tree which is a native of Southern Europe and was not indigenous in Britain. It is suggested that it may have been imported in the shape of a wooden handle or implement. The iron slag shows that the iron smelted on the spot was probably that from the Lower Greensand at Seend, whilst the pottery, of which there is no evidence that it was made on the spot, seems to have been made of Kimmeridge Clay from some seven or eight miles' distance, or possibly further still. The houses appear to have been rectangular, of wattle and daub (or perhaps though Mrs. Cunnington does not say so), the "mud" walling of which cottages in S. Wilts continued to be built until quite recently. The rectangular form of house appears to have preceded the circular, which was almost universal at Glastonbury. The pits, of which seventy-five were found, were none of them more than 5ft. in diameter, and could not have been dwelling pits. Probably they were for storage of grain, &c., and some

of them had domed covers of clay. The animal bones are commented on by Mr. J. W. Jackson, of the Manchester Museum. The small horse, Celtic ox, sheep, goat, pig, and dog, are all closely analogous to those found at Glastonbury. Very few red deer bones occurred, but several roe deer horns. An interesting fact is that one of the ox skulls was hornless, the earliest example of polled cattle yet found in Britain. A large number of chalk loom weights were found, and a curious point arising from a careful examination of them is that they were not hung perpendicularly, as has naturally been assumed from the hole in their smaller end, but were slung horizontally by a cord tied round them at right angles, like a parcel. A great quantity of bone implements were found, including a number of curious oval pendants of thin bone, perforated at one end, of the shape of Australian" Bull Roarers," which seem to be unknown from other sites. The bone "Rib Knives," too, so characteristic of All Cannings, of which examples have occurred at Lidbury and Casterley, seem to be confined, so far, to this county. Of the so-called Weaving Combs" many occurred. Of the sharp-pointed sheep or goat bones it is suggested that some of the smaller were hafted as goads for oxen. Two or three penannular bronze brooches were found, the age of which is uncertain, but probably they are contemporary with the two perfect bronze brooches of the characteristic La Tene I. type, and the two or three imperfect iron examples, which seem also to have been of this period. One iron swan-necked pin is recognised as typically Hallstatt, and a thistle-headed pin is no doubt contemporary, whilst three ring-headed pins are of La Tene I. type.

Out of the immense quantity of pottery fragments found, Mrs. Cunnington, by her unwearied industry, succeeded in restoring forty vessels of all kinds. the great majority of which are here illustrated. The largest number of fragments belonged to the urn-like vessels with finger-tip ornament, and next to these come the red-coated ware, some of it with omphalos base, which on the Continent is classed as of the Late Bronze, Hallstatt and early La Tene ages, and at Hengistbury it is classed as pre- La Tene. Of this redcoated pottery Mr. Thos. May writes:-"It has evidently undergone a similar process to the early Egyptian black-topped ware, which it resembles on the outside. The natural clay body has been coated with a pasty well. washed slip, and after drying, coated with haematite (in the form of rouge or ordinary red ruddle) by dipping in a watery solution or rubbing. It has then been polished with a smooth stone and burnt in an open fire. The free access of oxygen has caused the outside surface to be reddened, but the iron in the clay remains blue-grey on the inside."

A most valuable appendix deals with "The sequence of types of preRoman Pottery in Wiltshire." Neolithic has been found in the long barrows of W. Kennett, Lanhill, Norton Bavant, and Wexcombe Down, and in the ditches of Windmill Hill, Avebury, and the Old Camp at Knap Hill.

Of the Bronze Age pottery, wholly from the barrows or other graves, Mrs. Cunnington says:- "It seems now not at all improbable that some of the cinerary urns, hitherto regarded as of the Bronze Age, belong actually to a time when iron was already known and being extensively used in this country. It is suggested that urns with "finger-tip" ornament, or with

horizontal furrowing between neck and shoulder, should be regarded with suspicion in respect to their Bronze Age date; this would apply to the Deverel-Rimbury group and to vessels with raised mouldings decorated with finger-tip impressions."

As to the pottery of the Early Iron Age a flood of most unexpected light has been thrown on the subject by the recent excavations at All Cannings, those in the Fifield Bavant Pits by Dr. R. C. C. Clay, described in this number of the Magazine, the results of which are now in the Society's Museum, and those at Hanging Langford Camp by Mr. R. S. Newall (not yet published).

“As a whole the Fifield Bavant series is rather later in type, but the occurrence on both sites of red-coated cordoned bowls with incised ornament and high-shouldered cooking pots of La Tene I. type form connecting links between the two series." The pottery from Hanging Langford "is decidedly later in type than that from Fifield Bavant, but the connecting link between the two sites is supplied by the bead rim bowl which occurs on both, but is more fully developed on the latter. The bead rim bowls from Hanging Langford are comparable with those from Oare (Withy Copse) and the earlier dated pottery from Casterley Camp, sites where the wheel-turned bead rim bowl was by far the commonest vessel and was associated with Arretine, red and black Belgic, and Mont Beuvray wares, that bring us down to the first half of the first century A.D., and to the eve of the Roman occupation. These three sites, therefore, seem to cover the whole period of the British pre-Roman Iron Age; All Cannings Cross, pre-La Tene and La Tene I.; Fifield Bavant, La Tene I. and II.; Hanging Langford, La Tene III and IV. It was a fortunate coincidence that these three series of pottery, forming, it is believed, a complete sequence, should have been found almost simultaneously and within a single county." It is also a fortunate coincidence that the proceeds of the two first of these very important excavations have already found a home in the Museum at Devizes.

A review of this book by Prof. Sir Will. Boyd Dawkins appeared in the Wiltshire Gazette, Feb. 21st, 1924. The Professor makes a small slip when he says that the attention of the excavators was called originally to the spot from the prevalence of “pot boilers" on the surface of the field. As a matter of fact not one "pot boiler" occurred on the site, though over 1300 hammerstones or mullers of flint and sarsen were found.

The Saxon Land Charters of Wiltshire (First Series). By G. B. Grundy, D.Litt. Archaeological Journal, 1919, Vol. LXXVI, 143-301.

This is a voluminous and most important paper, the first instalment of the interpretation of the topography of the 300 Anglo-Saxon Charters which deal with Berkshire, Hampshire, and Wiltshire. Dr. Grundy claims that he is a pioneer in this work. Single charters have been dealt with by various scholars, but no one hitherto has attempted to deal with a large body of them at once. "Though some of these publications are of great value, yet there are very few of them; and all suffer from the fact that many of the Anglo-Saxon terms used in the surveys are misinterpreted in

the dictionaries to which such enquirers have had to have recourse. An examination of about three hundred charters of Berkshire, Hampshire, and Wiltshire, has enabled me to build up gradually a glossary of A.S. terms used in the surveys attached to the charters by accumulating instances of the objects to which the terms were applied. This has created a new vocabulary of meanings which are not to be found in the dictionary. But that vocabulary is not complete; and in respect to the rarer terms of unknown meaning I see no reason to hope that it ever can be." Dr. Grundy does not profess to have traced the boundaries of the surveys "in the field," but only on the 6in. ordnance maps. To follow the boundaries of the Wiltshire charters alone would mean 1200 miles of walking across country over all kinds of ground, a work obviously impossible for any single worker to contemplate. "I have claimed to be a pioneer, but there my claim must end, others after me will have to build on the basis of the preliminary work that I have done."

The charters are dealt with in the order in which they appear in Birch's Cartularium Saxonicum, the number attached to each in Kemble's Codex Diplomaticus being added. He deals first with a number of charters labelled " Downton " in the cartulary of Winchester Cathedral. He conconcludes that they deal with lands in Bishopstone and part of Stratford Tony with other lands not determinable. He notes that the part of modern Stratford Tony N. of the Roman road did not belong to it in A.S. times. As to the statement that these lands belonged to Downton "that is probably due to the fact that this piece of land was part of a large estate belonging to Winchester Cathedral in the Downton neighbourhood."

He concludes that Birch 32, a grant by Wulfhere of lands at Dilingtun, which has been identified with Dilton, is not a Wiltshire charter at all. Little Bedwyn (Birch 225) follows, and then Purton (Birch 279, 279a) a grant by Egeferth, K. of the Mercians, to Malmesbury Abbey, A.D. 796. Here he finds that the A.S. Hassukes more survives in the modern Haxmoor or Haxmore Farm, and that the river Worfe or Wurfe is the Ray. This latter river's name he notes is really a corruption of the A.S. Aet thaere ea i.e., the river, the principal stream in the neighbourhood.

Birch 390 has been identified with Alton, in Hants, but is really a charter of part at least of Alton Priors, Woden's Barrow is certainly Adam's Grave Long Barrow, and Red Gate is Red Shore, the gap in the Wans Dyke. Taesan Mead survives in Tawsmead Farm and Copse. Ciceling Weg is probably a local name for the Ridgeway. The boundaries of Alton Barnes and Alton Priors have been much altered in later days.

Birch 457, 458, a charter of Dauntsey (Dometesig; Dometesis; Daunteseye; Dameteseye). Domets Island (Dameteseye) is the island between the main Avon and a branch of it due W. of the village of Dauntsey. Scufa's Barrow (Scufan Borwe) is Clack Mount. Ydoure, i.e., Island Brook, is almost certainly Brinkworth Brook, and survives in the modern Idover Farm.

Birch 469, Hardenhuish, Dr. Grundy concludes that this attribution is correct.

Birch 477-479. Lands at Little Hinton and Wanborough. Smita is