Standing on an artificial island formed by a series of timber bridges, it occupied nearly three and a half acres, and its round huts, about sixty in number, were intermingled with a few square cabins that marked the most recent enterprise. Low walls were erected with upright posts driven into the artificial island at a distance of about a foot from each other; then this framework was wattled and plastered with clay. A few rough slabs of lias stone made a doorstep, a piece of timber lay across the threshold, a wood fire crackled on a central hearth, and every household wanted to feel entirely safe, for a tall and tight palisade enclosed the little colony. In this primitive defence a great many poles were set up side by side; they ranged in height from five to ten feet. Wolves and war were feared very much, evidently; and yet the villagers were devoted to that self-decoration with which men and women for many a long period had tried to rival the patterned colours given by Nature to birds, and beasts, and insects, and fish, and snakes, and flowers, and stones. They loved rings, cut from amber and jet and glass; wore bracelets, some of bronze, others of Kimmeridge shale; glass beads had their vogue, and clothes were fastened together with bronze safety-pins, or with split-ring brooches of bronze. Perhaps the women were truly feminine, and wore a monstrous headgear, outraging their good looks in fashionable efforts to renew their beauty. Drawing closer to this village perched up on primitive bridges, we find in it some weavers and spinners, a few wood-carvers who were true artists, some carpenters who had lathes, and some clever smiths who made iron knives, awls, spades, bill-hooks, gouges; and a few ambitious potters decorated their work and gave it a careful finish. Harvests were grown somewhere, as women used querns to grind the corn. Good little people! They wanted to be pacific and artistic; fighting did not set their genius; and so they vanished. How could they hope to protect the gift of life when British war-chariots and Roman soldiers began to fight in the neighbourhood, obeying the dread mysterious law of fruitful carnage? They slunk away from the fierce midwifery of war, fearing the long self-sacrifices of a painful renaissance. Their gentle enterprise lasted from about the second or third century B.C. to the Roman occupation. Among the remains of their village several skulls have been found, mild-looking skulls of a long shape, like those which have been taken from the long barrows. It was an Iberic tribe that trifled with peace and art, showing an epicene fervour akin to that of our cooing sentimentalists. Perhaps the Romans allowed the village to fade out of being, or perhaps they cleared it away as a futility, for neither Roman coins nor Roman wares have been found on the site, though remnants of Roman villas and potteries have been unburied in the vicinity.[49]