A Book of Dartmoor: Second EditionBaring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
History
A Book of Dartmoor: Second Edition
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Dartmoor (England)
One found at Legis Tor had been cracked and was mended with china-clay.
It had a cooking-stone in it. There would seem to have been in use as
well shallower vessels that were covered with round slate discs. None
of these have been recovered whole. Possibly they were employed to hold
curd or butter.
Occasionally round stones, flat on one side and convex on the other,
have been disinterred in the huts. They served to protect the apex
of the roof, where the poles were drawn together, from the action of
the rain, which would rot them, as well as to prevent the rain from
entering at this point. An example of a stone of the same character
employed for this very purpose may be seen in actual use on a thatched
circular pounding-house on Berry Down, near Throwleigh.
Not a single quern has been found in a hut, and this indicates that
the occupants neither grew nor ground corn extensively.[9] They lived
mainly on milk and meat. Numerous rubber-stones have been unearthed
that served for smoothing the seams of skin clothing sewn together;
and plenty of flint scrapers that turn up show that the skins employed
for garments were previously carefully scraped and cleaned. Esquimaux
women chew the leather to get it flexible, and then rub it with similar
smoothers of stone.
7. _Tracklines_ in abundance are everywhere found, made of stones, but
without close investigation it is not possible to determine to what
period they belong.
8. Paved roads exist; the main road across the moor has been traced
from Wray Barton in Moreton Hampstead, by Berry Pound to Merripit, by
Post Bridge, and thence on to Mis Tor. From somewhere near the Powder
Mills a branch struck off in the direction of Princetown, aiming
probably for Tamerton, but it has been obliterated by the prison
inclosures. A raised paved road leaves the camp above Okehampton
Station and takes a direction due south, but cannot be traced far. That
these ways were not Roman is tolerably certain. The ancient Britons
drove chariots with wheels, and where wheeled conveyances were in use,
there roads are postulated.
9. The _cairns_ that are abundant, and were of considerable size, have
nearly all been ransacked by treasure-seekers. Only such as were too
small to attract attention have escaped. They are mounds of earth and
stone over a pit sunk in the original soil, or over a kistvaen. Usually
they contain a handful of ashes only; they rarely yield more. One,
however, on Hamildon surrendered a bronze knife with amber handle and
rivets of gold. Others have given up small knives of bronze, and urns
of the characteristic shape and ornamentation of the Bronze Age. In
one, on Fernworthy Common, was found a thin blade of copper, along with
a flint knife, a large button of horn, and a well-ornamented urn.
A cairn surrounded by a circle of stones, and containing a kistvaen,
near Princetown, is called "The Crock of Gold," a name that may be due
to a vessel of the precious metal having been found in it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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