EXCAVATIONS IN PILLOW MOUNDS AT HIGH BEACH. 221
pottery. Further, they seem to belong to a comparatively deep
horizon at the bottom of the surface soil, substantially below the
surface level on which the mounds were constructed.
I dug many pot-boilers from under the middle of the mounds,
quite on the surface of the Bagshot Sand, and below the un-
disturbed stony loam. It is not improbable that there may be
Neolithic cooking sites in association with some of the many
springs which are thrown out along the margin of the Bagshot
Sand.
The Flint Implements.—It is very likely that these belong
to the same deeper level as the pot-boilers, and that they were
accidentally picked up with the soil. They are less numerous
than the pot-boilers, and I did not actually find more than a very
few flakes along the pot-boiler horizon at the bottom of the
original surface soil.
No implements worth special description were found during
the excavations.
Some years ago I found a small example of the "Thames
pick" group in one of the rabbit holes of Mound B. It is 41/4
inches long and scarcely more than 11/2 inch wide; it is of
sub-triangular section, with a transverse "tranchet" blow on
one side of the cutting edge.
From time to time I have found several minor implements,
and many good flakes. Some of these may be contemporary
with the mounds, but I think that the majority at least are
earlier.1
Mr. W. H. Ryde has also been fortunate enough to find a
broken piece of flint saw. It is the middle piece of a flake, finch
long, but broken off at either end, skilfully notched along one
edge into small teeth at the rate of 28 to the inch.
Are the Pillow Mounds Rabbit Warrens? Several old
inhabitants of unimpeachable veracity are confident that the
mounds were made within their own memory to serve the
purpose of artificial rabbit-warrens. One cannot doubt that
they remember digging being done, but I feel that it is a
long way to carry memory back and yet be sure that nothing
existed there previously. It seems to me that it is a feasible
I Since the above was written, evidences have been obtained in Loughton Camp (which also
is of the Prehistoric Iron Age) which render it more probable that the flint implements found
in the pillow mounds may be contemporary.