64 Report on the excavation of the Earthwork
rampart is shown by the difference of colour in the interior
of the substance. This is due to imperfect baking, and
implies a primitive condition of the art. Up to what period
hand-made pottery was used in this country we have no
means of knowing; but where the fragments are entirely
hand-made it is reasonable to suppose it to be of early date.
The two kinds of pottery found here—the smooth quality,
with or without large grains of quartz, and the rough and
sandy quality, often red-brick colour on the outside—have
been found by me associated together in other camps; they are
British or Romano-British, that is, British before or after the
Roman Conquest. There is no ornamentation on any of the
fragments found at Ambresbury Banks which would enable
one to fix the date more precisely. Judging by their quality
none of the pieces are Roman or Norman, and no fragment
of Samian ware has been found. A single fragment of
Samian pottery on the old surface line beneath the rampart
would have determined the entrenchment to be Roman.
Although a few flint flakes have been found in the rampart
they are not in sufficient Humber to prove with certainty that
they were in use at the time of the construction of the
rampart; they may have belonged to the soil, and have
been turned up with it. They are usually much more
plentiful in those camps which belong to the Bronze Age,
for there can be little doubt that they were used late into the
Bronze Age, if not more recently ; and this fact alone appears
to me to imply that this camp is more recent than the
Bronze Age.5
The excavation of the silting in the ditch showed that it
had originally been triangular in its section and pointed at
the bottom, the escarp rising at an angle of 45°, and the
counterscarp probably at the same angle, though now flatter;
it was 22 feet wide at the top and 10 feet deep, and it has
since silted up 7 feet from the bottom. The present centre
of the ditch is now about 2 feet to the outside of the old
5 Although a considerable number of flints were sent to me for
examination, the majority, with the exception of those here named, were
natural forms, and showed no evidence of human agency.