THE "SALTING MOUNDS" OF ESSEX.
101
Two suggestions as to the origin of the mounds have been made
to me. One by Mr. Dalton, F.G.S-, that they were camp-sites when
the surrounding country was densely covered with forest, except the
belt between normal high water and the storm range of spring tides.
The other by the Rev. J. C. Atkinson, of Danby-near-Zarm, who
regards them as being the relics of numerous salt works, similar
mounds having been proved by him and Canon Greenwell to have
been the sites of old salt works at Redcar and Coatham in Yorkshire.
Mr. Atkinson has seen both series and maintains their identity. His
paper is published in the "Archaeological Journal," vol. 37 (1880),
pages 196 to 199, and is entitled "Some Further Notes on the Salt-
ing Mounds of Essex."
I am not, however, prepared to accept unreservedly this view of
Mr. Atkinson's. Like many other theories it must be taken with a
grain of salt, or, indeed, as many grains as a whole summer's evapo-
ration would yield in the position in which some of these supposed
salt works were placed if the rivers then were as fresh as at the present
time.
At any rate the rude character of the associated pottery, the
absence of any trace of metal, and the downward extension of the
calcined masses to the London clay argue a high antiquity, higher
than that of the surrounding alluvium, four or five feet in depth,
perhaps higher than the change of course of the river, to which I
have referred already. Vast changes have taken place in the out-
line, and perhaps in the drainage system, of Essex within the post-
glacial epoch (using that term as including the present age). The
occurrence, at Clacton-on-Sea, of lacustrine beds overlaid by
estuarine deposits now thirty feet above sea level, and of submerged
forests of more recent date than these estuarine beds, points to
important oscillations at a date at least posterior to the advent of
man in Britain, even if we do not accept the alleged proofs of human
workmanship in glacial and pliocene deposits.
On the outer edge of the Bradwell mud flats south of the Black-
water, there are seen after storms the remains of ancient brick build-
ings, exposed at low water of springtides. The deposition of mud
on that coast is slowly advancing the saltings eastward, and in course
of time these ruins may be once more within the area of dry land—a
distant event, it is true, but one that will be more rapidly brought
about if ever the old proposal to bring thither the sewage of London
should be carried out. Meanwhile the facts of the existence of the