PREHISTORIC SITE AT TWITTY FEE, DANBURY. 89
Museum. I kept a few pieces for myself and had the pleasure
of showing them at our meeting on the 27th October, 1934.
As the Hallstatt culture is that of the first phase of the Early
Iron Age, and as nothing has so far been found on the field
dating from the fully developed Bronze Age period, it is possible
that the site was unoccupied for the 1,500 years or so that passed
between the time when the Beaker man left his bracer on the
field and the arrival of the users of this Hallstatt pottery, who
had probably come direct from overseas up the Blackwater
estuary. The La Tene III pottery belongs to the second phase
of the Early Iron Age and probably dates in this case from the
first decades of our era. The Blackwater and the Colne, among
the Essex estuaries, were those most favoured by the users of
this kind of pottery.12
When Mr. Rudsdale, of the Colchester Museum, visited the
site towards the end of 1932 he noticed the existence of a trench,
and when the further working carried the pit into the wood on
the south side of the field and exposed a section of a trench on
one side of the working (marked 1 on the plan of the site) and
another section on the opposite side (2 on the plan) it dawned
on my wife and me that we were dealing with a prehistoric camp-
The rampart is ill defined even in the wood where alone it
exists. In the field (which old inhabitants can remember was
at one time cultivated, although it has for a considerable time
been derelict and covered with bramble and small birch trees),
the plough has long since obliterated both the rampart and all
surface indications of the ditch.
After a lull of some months in the working of the gravel,
Mr. Burr told me in May, 1935, that a mechanical digger was
to be employed, and as I knew that such a digger would, if it
were used on the site of the supposed camp, very quickly destroy
all evidence of the existence of such a camp, I felt that if the
question was to be settled it was no good, in view of the urgency,
waiting until the site could be excavated by experts. I therefore
decided that I had better try to do what I could myself, so I
applied to our Council, who generously agreed to finance the
work of excavating such of the site as had not already been
destroyed.
12 The Distribution of Man in East Anglia. Sir Cyril Fox. Proceedings of the Prehistoric
Society, vol. vii., Part II.