African natives, as
travellers testify.

[Illustration: ARTICLES FOUND IN PIT DWELLINGS
(1) Knife of deer-antler
(2) Bone needle
(3) Marrow scoop
(4, 5) Bone awls]

One of the pits at Hurstbourne was evidently a cooking-hole, where the
pit dwellers prepared their feasts, and bones of the Celtic ox (_bos
longifrons_), pig, red deer, goat, dog, and hare or rabbit were found
near it. One of the bones had evidently been bitten by teeth. The pit
dwellers also practised some domestic industries, as Dr. Stevens found a
needle, an awl or bodkin, and fragments of pointed bone, probably used
for sewing skins together. A rude spindle-whorl shows that they knew
something of weaving, and two bored stones were evidently buttons or
dress-fasteners. A large supply of flint implements, scrapers, and
arrow-heads, proves that the dwellings were inhabited by the Neolithic
people before the Britons came to occupy them. I must not omit to notice
the heating stones, or "pot-boilers." These were heated in the fire, and
then placed among the meat intended to be cooked, in a hole in the
ground which served the purpose of a cooking pot. I have found many such
stones in Berkshire, notably from the neighbourhood of Wallingford and
Long Wittenham. The writer of the _Early History of Mankind_ states that
the Assineboins, or stone-boilers, dig a hole in the ground, take a
piece of raw hide, and press it down to the sides of the hole, and fill
it with water; this is called a "paunch-kettle"; then they make a number
of stones red-hot in a fire close by, the meat is put into the water,
and the hot stones dropped in until it is cooked. The South Sea
Islanders have similar primitive methods of cooking. The Highlanders
used to prepare the feasts of their clans in much the same way; and the
modern gipsies adopt a not very dissimilar mode of cooking their stolen
fowls and hedgehogs.

We can now people these cheerless primitive pit dwellings with their
ancient inhabitants, and understand something of their manners of life
and customs. Their rude abodes had probably cone-shaped roofs made of
rafters lashed together at the centre, protected by an outside coat of
peat, sods of turf, or rushes. The spindle-whorl is evidence that they
could spin thread; the mealing stones show that they knew how to
cultivate corn; and the bones of the animals found in their dwellings
testify to the fact that they were not in the wild state of primitive
hunters, but possessed