Page:VCH Bedfordshire 1.djvu/204

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A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE a large round barrow, and an ancient trackway could be traced from between these barrows to the chief entrance of the British camp named Maiden Bower. Flint flakes are abundant round the sites of both barrows. The people of the later stone and bronze ages lived chiefly in places where water was conveniently at hand, in camps protected by ramparts, ditches and palisades. They had look-out huts on all the high positions and in places bordering their trackways. Their houses were huts or wigwams of sticks and skins. The chief neolithic weapons and tools were the axe and adze, often partly or wholly ground, the pick, lance, dagger, arrow, sling-stone, knife and scraper. There were also many minor tools, some of unknown use. These relics are generally distributed over Bedfordshire, being more commonly found in valleys, on plains, and near rivers and water- courses than on the hills. The newer stone implements are often called ' surface implements,' because they are commonly found on the surface of the ground. They are best seen in harrowed fields after showers of rain. They are con- stantly turned up by the plough, and are not uncommon on heaps of flints in fields, by the roadside and in cart ruts. They are often found in and near ancient camps, by water-courses, in sheltered places at hill bottoms, and in tumuli. It will be convenient to illustrate the neolithic and later surface weapons and tools of Bedfordshire at this place. Some examples are many years older than others, but none are so old as the palaeolithic age. These implements are spread irregularly all over Bedfordshire. Strange as it may appear, centuries of field cultivation have made but little difference in the nature of their positions. The interior of the camp called Maiden Bower near Dunstable contains, or has contained, many stone implements and flint flakes. For a certain number of yards outside the camp the same abundance prevails, but beyond a given cir- cuit both implements and flakes are rare. The camp and the adjoining fields have been under cultivation for centuries, yet the old average of worked and unworked stones still holds good. Under the turf on the top of the earthen bank which surrounds this camp, a group of several stone mullers was found, and at another time a collection of sling or throw- stones on the very spot where they were made and laid down for use. The same is true of the camp called Waulud's Bank near Leagrave, Luton. A little more than a mile south of Dunstable there is a place named on the ordnance maps Mount Pleasant, a large, high, wind-swept, almost treeless hill. Immediately to the south of this place surface implements and flakes have been found in abundance, but always within a given circuit ; outside this region even flakes are rare. Mount Pleasant in ancient British times must have been a living place and a place of manu- facture of stone tools. A similar prolific place occurs at half a mile south- west of Dunstable, just east of the place named ' California ' on the 1 60