134 UNEXPLORED FIELDS OF ESSEX ARCHAEOLOGY.
as it would seem, disadvantageous conditions. This being so
I suggest that the alluvium of all the Essex rivers above the
tidal points is a likely field for Neolithic exploration. Excava-
tions in that deposit are rare, and observations, I am afraid, have
been still rarer. Of the two or three excavations that I have
known relics have occurred in every case, but they were
scarcely noted and certainly not preserved.
With such a breadth of unexplored territory as is here
presented it is easy for speculation to run somewhat rife. It is
therefore the more incumbent on me that I confine myself to
what I submit may be justifiably inferred. If we consider these
lakes or ponds to represent places of habitations, as we are
justified in doing by the quantity of relics that continually recur,
then we may assimilate them to the lake dwellings of the river
valley, the existence of one at least of which is placed beyond
doubt. We have thus a whole county presented to our eyes
inhabited by an amphibious population. Had these been in the
heyday of their prosperity when the Romans invaded the land
we should certainly have had some record of them, but as no
record is forthcoming, we presume that that population had gone
entirely.
Perhaps the next relic in chronological order, if, indeed, it is
not contemporary, and of which but little notice appears to have
been taken, is the ancient system of roads that occur in Essex.
There is one system that can very well be made out that must be
of great antiquity. It is those roads that skirt the rivers from
their sources to the sea. These roads often go along the edge of
the Alluvium and give rise to the unmistakable inference that
they at one time represented the hard path by the water's edge.
It is not easy to assign any of them to a date on this side of the
Roman occupation. They were certainly not made by the
Romans, as there is good evidence to show. In connection
with these roads are other minor roads, of which no system can
be made out. They led sometimes to, and can be shown to have
been in connection with, the lakes or ponds of the interior. If
then we suppose the main system to have been in use by the
river dwellers, then these minor roads would stand as secondaries
to that system. It is chiefly because of their connection with the
ponds and river system, and their total independence of the
Roman roads, that I thought they may be of such great antiquity.