A HISTORY OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE iron remains from the marsh village, and then travel up to Reading while they are fresh in the memory and compare them with the iron articles in the museum where are displayed all the finds of the buried Roman city of Calleva at Silchester, which has lain undisturbed for centuries under the soil. But to return to our comparison of the articles from Hunsbury with those from Duston, no coin has been found at the camp, while over a thousand Roman coins ranging from Claudius to Honorius have been found at Duston. The pottery is entirely different, the brooches are made upon different systems, the spearheads and swords from Hunsbury are not represented at Duston, and if we bring in other negative evidences to help us, at Hunsbury, though there are numerous remains of the red deer and roe deer, there is not a single fragment of the fallow deer which was introduced into Britain by the Romans. Are they Saxon or Danish ? No ; not a single article ; as can be at once proved by comparison with remains of these two peoples. The evidence goes clearly to establish the fact of its being a camp made and occupied by a tribe of ancient Britons at a time when iron had supplanted (for general purpose) the use of bronze, not going farther back than 200 years B.C., and perhaps inhabited down to the time of the Roman conquest of this part of Britain about the middle of the first century after Christ. Dr. Munro says : ' The presence of querns and long-handled combs in the Glastonbury lake village and in the Hunsbury camp associated with the debris of continued occupancy, in which no characteristic Roman remains are found, points to a pre- Roman civilization probably due to an immigration of Belgic or Gaulish tribes ' ; and Mr. Arthur Evans' opinion is ' that it is probable that the bulk of the objects found in the ancient British oppidum (Huns- bury) belong to the latest pre-Roman period, and are slightly posterior to those of the Aylesford cemetery.' What do we learn from these remains ? That these people were no mean agriculturists, as they grew four kinds of corn ; and as so many querns were found, probably each family had its own set of stones. The spindle whorls and carding combs denote a knowledge of spinning and weaving. This would show that they wore clothing, and did not travel about in a suit of blue paint, as Caesar relates of the inland tribes. There is that fine series of iron weapons and implements to show their proficiency in ironwork, and as remains of slag have been found in the camp we may conclude that the ironstone was smelted — that same ironstone which was not re- discovered until about 1857. The remains of animals tell us the flesh they consumed ; while as for their art, what can be more beautiful in design than some of the patterns of this period ? Evidence goes to show that the departure from the camp was sudden, or how are we to account for the finding of all the millstones in the rubbish pits ? It may be that the inhabitants of the camp put into force the old adage : ' He who fights and runs away will live to fight another day.' Besides the camp at Hunsbury there are other camps in the county which may belong to this period or to an earlier one, viz. Rainsborough 152
