220 THE ESSEX NATURALIST.
characteristic feature. Precisely similar flints were picked up
in 1925 from the site of the Coronation bonfire of King
George V.
I think the evidence is conclusive that hot fires were in some
way associated with the foundation of the mounds.
I washed out a considerable quantity of the Baked Sand
through a fine screen, but without any useful result.
The Pottery.—During the course of watching the rabbit-
scratchings for some years I have found a very large number of
small fragments of flinty hand-made pottery, such as is charac-
teristic of the Prehistoric Iron Age. It is not to be found in the
general surface away from the Mounds. It was this fact which
led to the present investigation.
The diggings resulted in more than a dozen fragments of
hand-made pottery, mostly from the baked sand cf Mound B.
Although the pieces are small they are all characteristic of the
Prehistoric Iron Age, and there can be no question about their
dating.
I also found one small fragment of wheel-turned pottery,
which came from the baked sand of Mound E. I have com-
pared this with Iron Age vessels, and find that its texture agrees
well with them. So far as I could see this tiny piece was in
undisturbed baked sand, but the mounds are so honeycombed
that one cannot be sure that anything is trustworthy. But I
think the argument is a fair one that if the rabbits did take in
the Iron Age pottery, then the mounds must have been there
when that pottery was in daily use.
The Pot-Boilers.—The rabbit-scratchings have also yielded
large numbers of pot-boilers, or cooking-stones, cf the usual
character. I have always regarded these as contributory evi-
dence of the antiquity of these problematical mounds, but our
trenching did not support this view. When one comes to think
further, one must remember that cooking-stones are domestic,
whereas the pillow mounds, whatever they may have heen,
were certainly not domestic.
It is true that pot-boilers occur plentifully throughout the
material of the mounds, though perhaps less frequently in the
baked sand than elsewhere. But any mound made to-day
would contain them equally; they are abundant in the surface
soil, and are not confined to the mounds, as is the Iron Age