Page:Prehistoric Britain.djvu/215

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INHABITED SITES
207

occasionally as places of usual abode. However, from the earliest times men were in the habit of constructing various kinds of artificial huts, which they often fortified by enclosures of stone, earth or wood. There may be no chronological sequence in the construction and selection of these different kinds of abode, although caves were probably the only places of security of the earlier races of mankind. But caves have been more or less inhabited in all successive ages, concurrently with other kinds of artificial habitations, as we have noted in the case of Kent's Cavern, which afforded shelter to both Palæolithic and Neolithic races up to post-Roman times.

Caves.—Besides the caves of South Britain, already described as the haunts of Palæolithic man, we may mention the Victoria Cave near Settle, Kirkhead Cave on the north shore of Morecambe Bay, Poole's Cave near Buxton, Thor's Cave in Staffordshire, and the Borness Cave in Kirkcudbrightshire, as examples of caves which, after careful exploration, have yielded abundant evidence of having been inhabited as late as Romano-British times.

In the cave of Heathery Burn, near Durham, there was found a remarkable hoard of objects of the Bronze Age, together with two human skeletons, charcoal, and other evidence of human occupancy. Among this varied assortment of relics were a singular socketed knife, socketed celts (and a mould for the same),