IRON AGE BABY

Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 91, 15 October 1934, Page 7

IRON AGE BABY

UNEARTHED IN BRITAIN

A NEW DISCOVERY

The skeleton of a child, who died some two thousand years ago, lies on its side in a small pit oa the summit of that vast prehistoric fortification, known as Maiden Castte, on the outskirts of Dorchester, Dorsetshire. It has been uncovered by excavators working in charge of Dr. Mortimer Wheeler, of the London Museum, says the "Daily, Express." As it lay when found, so the skeleton. was buried after its short life of two or three years —its knees up to its chest, its hand clasping its thighs. An earthenware pot, which had contained food for its journey after death, was close by. Mai Dun (or Strong Hill), as tho ancient Celts called Maiden Castle, was a camp in the Stone Age, but this baby belonged to people of tho later Iron Age, the people whose threefold line of mighty ditches and ramparts was found by the Romans encircling an oval of 120 acres. There they lived securely with their cattle. At each end a maze-like approach wound up from a plain. A dew-pond on top gave them water. No one could cross the terrifying slopes of the ditches unless the inhabitants willed it. They lived in pits dug out of the chalk and thatched over. They used iron. They wove cloth. They cooked in separate pits, where traces of ashes still persist, carried the food into tho living rooms, and ate it, throwing tho bones over their shoulders. It was the legend of a Roman villa that led to the recent excavations; but tho work has uncovered, instead, a temple, and, surrounding it at a lower level, tho civilisation into which thq Iron Age baby was born. The expert excavators —young men and sinewy young women who favour grey flannel trousers for working rig —squat in the pits sifting earth and taking measurements. Visitors whoso cars have taken the prehistoric road to the plateau, stand and gape. Some of them buy Roman nails and chunks of pottery at a penny a time. Here are the walls of the small square temple. They were built of rubble, with brick courses, and faced with concrete. The roof was of red tiles, and on three of them are the pawmarks of a dog who galloped across the brickfield while they were drying, and was cursed in Latin for his pains, somewhere about tho year 300 A.D. Here is the baby's grave, temporarily, protected by a tipped-up wheelbarrow. Next it is a dwelling pit, twelve and a half feet deep, the bones of old feasts swept against tho walls. Why, asks Mr. Salusbury, did the Romans build a temple here? No ono knows. They had a perfectly good city close by in Dorchester. Perhaps it was to placate a local deity.

Davis Bros., auctioneers, 57-50 Lower Cuba Street (below James Smith's), trill sell furniture, carpets., etc., by auction on the premises, 154 Oriental Bay (opposite Te Avo Baths), at J2 o'clock tomorrow.