60 Report on the excavation of the Earthwork
foot of the interior slope at s, as wide as you please, say ten
feet, digging down to t, v, so as to be well below the old
surface line g, l, z, which in your soil will probably only be
marked by a little white decayed matter representing the old
turf. Whatever is found in the body of the rampart, a, m, n, l,
and especially on the old surface line a, l, must be of the date
of the construction of the camp or earlier; but things found
in the silting of the interior slope, m, g, a, may be of various
dates subsequent to the construction of the camp, the age of
an object thus found depending upon its proximity to the old
foot of the interior slope a. This is a very important point
to notice, as any mistake between the body of the rampart
and the silting would give an entirely false idea of the date.
"In like manner the ditch should be dug in spits down
from the top. What is found in the upper spit is quite
recent; the second spit older; and things of the date of the
camp will be found only in the bottom spit.
''It will be found that the point i, marking the present
centre of the bottom of the ditch, is always to the outside of
the old bottom, k,—perhaps 3 or 4 feet, according to
circumstances, but always outside,—more silting having
gone from the rampart into the ditch than into the interior.
I have had sometimes to dig down as much as 3 feet
below g before finding the old surface line. The old surface
in this place must have been very uneven at the time the
rampart was made."
Fig. 2, Plate IV., is a section, by Mr. D'Oyley, through
the centre of the cutting at Ambresbury Banks, showing the
seams in the rampart and ditch, and the position of each
object found. As the position of the objects in a vertical
plane is all that is necessary to take notice of, everything is
projected in this section. Each object as it was found was
numbered, put into a small pill-box, ticketed on the spot,
and marked on the section. At the conclusion of the exca-
vations the entire collection was sent up to me for comparison
with similar objects found in the ramparts of other camps.
The following were the objects found :—
No. 1. An outside flint flake with bulb of percussion, and