The Prehistoric World; Or, Vanished RacesAllen, Emory Adams
History
The Prehistoric World; Or, Vanished Races
Allen, Emory Adams
Archaeology; Indians; Prehistoric peoples
Fortified inclosures have been described in Belgium. We are told,
“They are generally established on points overhanging valleys, on
a mass of rocks forming a kind of headland, which is united to
the rest of the country by a narrow neck of land. A wide ditch
was dug across this narrow tongue of land, and the whole camp was
surrounded by a thick wall of stone, simply piled one upon
another, without either mortar or cement.” “One of these walls,
when described, was ten feet thick, and the same in height.”
These intrenched positions were so well chosen that most of them
continued to be occupied during the ages which followed. The
Romans occasionally utilized them for their camps. Over the whole
inclosure of these ancient camps worked flints and remains of
pottery have been found.13 These fortified places have been well
studied in the south of England.
What is known as the South-Downs in Sussex is a range of hills of
a general height of seven hundred feet. This section is about
five miles wide and fifty miles long. Four rivers flow through
these downs to the sea. In olden times their lower courses must
have been deep inlets of the sea, thus dividing those hills into
five groups, each separated from the other by a wide extent of
water and marsh land. To the north of these hills was a vast
expanse of densely wooded country. It is not strange, then, to
find traces of numerous settlements among these hills. As the
surface soil is very thin, old embankments can still be traced.
The cut given is a representation of Cissbury, one of the largest
of these camps. It incloses nearly sixty acres. The rampart
varies according to the slope of the hill. Where the ascent was
at all easy it was made double. Fortified camps are very numerous
throughout the hill country. They vary, of course, in size, but
the situation was always well chosen.14
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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