Page:Prehistoric Britain.djvu/235

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PROTECTIVE WORKS
227

their scarcity, as they yielded archæological remains of the greatest importance to British history.

The chronological range of the occupation of the former was confined to the century and a half which preceded the Roman occupation, and its relics are thus the purest exposition of Late Celtic civilization hitherto found in Britain. The village was constructed on peaty ground within a marsh in the form of a gigantic crannog, with foundations and platforms of wood, stones, brushwood, etc., and fortified with wooden palisading. The site of this unique British village occupied a triangular space, measuring between three and four acres, and contained some 90 circular huts, each containing a prepared hearth of stones and clay. The investigation of the village extended over a period of some twenty years, and the results are recorded in the magnificent monograph, in two quarto volumes, just published under the editorship of Messrs. Bulleid and St. George Gray.

The Meare village which is now being investigated appears, from the character of the relics and structure of the huts, to belong to the same chronological horizon as that of Glastonbury.