A HISTORY OF WORCESTERSHIRE throw more light on the state of the county at this time. In other counties, in addition to finds of axes, adzes and flakes such as have been found in Worcestershire, a systematic search has been rewarded by the finding of bone instruments, rude fragments of pottery and the remains of domestic animals. In some counties traces of the clusters of huts which formed the tribal dwellings have also been discovered, in others remains of the mounds which formed the places of interment of the Neolithic men. None of these details have as yet been found in Worces- tershire, possibly because they have not been properly looked for. After an exhaustive search has been made it may be possible for some future writer to do more than merely state the fact of the existence of Neo- lithic man in the county. Fig. A gives a rough sketch of the county showing the places where the Neolithic remains have up till now been found. A glance at it shows the position of the hills and the river valleys where the traces of this race of men have been discovered in the county. The Bronze Age The Neolithic dwellers in Britain devoted their attention to agricul- ture. They were rudely disturbed in their occupation of the island by a race of invaders who having the advantage of better weapons succeeded in dispossessing the inhabitants from their English settlements and driving them first to the west of the Severn and afterwards to remote corners of Wales. It is in this period that the importance of Worcestershire com- mences, for in it probably began that series of conflicts that was con- tinuous until Wales became part of England. Successive invaders drove the previous occupants of the county to the districts west of the Severn. The row of forts on the western boundaries of Worcestershire bears evidence to this fact. The forts on this line mark either the limits of the invasion, or the advance line of defence of the old inhabitants against further aggression, or the advance line of the invaders' outposts to pre- vent raids from the old inhabitants of the district from which they had been dispossessed. This feature remains to the present day along the hills to the west of the Severn from Abberley to Malvern, and from Malvern to Redmarley. Most of the hills that command any of the passes to the west show traces of earthworks, such as Woodbury and the Berrow at Martley, which command the passes into the Teme valley ; on the Malvern Hills the Camp Hill and Midsummer Hill command the roads over these hills. Probably all these camps in their present form have few if any remains of the work of the early invaders or defenders of the country ; but other traces of earthworks remain to point out the then state of things — the invaders pushing on, the dwellers in the county resisting the invasion. There is considerable evidence of the occupation of Worcestershire by the Goidels, as the invaders who dispossessed the Neolithic men are called. Here the evidence does not only consist of finding weapons and 182
