Menhirs or "longstones" are upright monoliths, probably set up in
memorial of the dead. Of these there are many in Cornwall but none of
great height. The Pipers in St Buryan are the loftiest, 13 ft. 6 in. and
15 ft.
[Illustration: The Merry Maidens, St Buryan]
Of stone alignments Cornwall is almost wholly barren, but one at St
Breock can be claimed with confidence. This is the more remarkable as
they abound on Dartmoor. But the reason probably is that the stones have
been carried off to serve as gateposts, and in some cases are embedded
in walls of fields. They were probably erected in commemoration of the
dead and are always associated with cairns and interments.
Subterranean chambers, constructed of upright stones with coverers, were
possibly store chambers for grain. The best preserved is at Trelowarren.
Upright holed stones are met with in Madron, St Buryan, St Just,
Sancreed, Constantine, Wendron, etc. Their purport is unknown.
Very curious are the clusters of communal huts at Chysauster,
Bosporthennis, etc. They probably belong to the Iron Age, whereas the
hut circles scattered over a hill side, or within a pound, pertained to
the early Bronze Age.
Arrow heads, lance heads and scrapers have been found in tolerable
abundance on the Bodmin moors, on Carn Brea, at St Agnes, etc., and
celts (axe heads) of greenstone and diorite have occurred, but not with
great frequency.
At Harlyn Bay has been found a cemetery of the Iron Age, all the bodies
in slate cists, crouching. In the cairns and kistvaens (stone coffins)
on the other hand the bodies have been burnt. Numerous urns of the
well-determined Bronze Age type have been recovered from cairns.
The camps of stone and earth in Cornwall are very numerous. They all--or
nearly all--date back to the same period of the early bronze, but may
have been used by later peoples. They are of two descriptions, the cliff
castles, where a headland is protected by banks and dykes on the side of
the mainland, and circular or oval camps crowning heights, with
concentric rings of circumvallation. Where the hill top does not admit
of the circular form the earthworks adapt themselves to the contour of
the hill.
Roman remains are conspicuously rare in Cornwall. Some fragments of
Samian ware, coins, and a bronze and silver metal vessel have been found
in Bossens, a camp in St Erth, and the head of an ensign at St Just. A
second Roman camp is Tregeare, near Bodmin. An inscribed milestone of
the time of Constantine the Great is in the churchyard of St Hilary. The
metal bowl at Bossens was inscribed by Aelius Modestus to the god Mars.
Of the Celtic period, gold lunettes have been found at Harlyn; a gold
cup near the Cheesewring in a cairn along with a corroded iron weapon; a
portion of a gold armlet at Penzance and of a brooch at the Lizard.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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