A further discovery was made yesterday at the sepulchural mound at Garthbeibio, Montgomery, the Welsh Luxor, in which Dr. Mortimer Wheeler, of the Welsh National Museum, on Saturday found human remains and relics of the bronze age, which, he says, date back approximately to the same period as Tutankhamen.
Yesterday Mr Wilfred Hemp, of the Ancient Monuments Commission, further explored the mound and unearthed a fine specimen of a sepulchral urn, buried about 2ft. 6in. from the top of the mound and some distance from the tomb. It is a characteristic piece of Bronze Age pottery about one foot high, with primitive ornamentation on the surface consisting of short straight lines, probably made with a stick before the clay was baked. It presents a conundrum for archæologists, as it was filled with hard clay, and from a cursory examination, Mr Hemp said he did not think there were cremated remains in the clay. The clay, he said, must have been put in when the urn was buried, as it could not have filtered in later. “The whole discovery throws new light on the Bronze Age in Britain,” remarked Mr Hemp to our correspondent, “as there are several variations in the mound and its relics from others previously explored.”
The urn is being sent to Dr. Wheeler at the Welsh National Museum for careful examination of the contents. It is in a very friable condition after being buried for about 3,500 years, but Mr Kemp has succeeded in unearthing it practically intact.
Mr Hemp is reporting to His Majesty’s Office of Works on the question of preserving the mound.
The dug out canoe which has been unearthed at Green Farm, Astbury, is in a remarkable state of preservation. One end has apparently been cut away, and the other is quaintly shaped. Two pierced holes in the sides obviously served as rowlocks. Fashioned from a single piece of oak, the canoe measures 12 feet 8 inches long, and one foot 9 inches wide, the internal depth being one foot.
Its presence in Astbury, where there is no water other than brooks and ponds, is accounted for by the formation of the ground where the boat was found, which is basin-shaped, and is presumed to have been the site of a glacial lake. When the ice-sheet melted, Cheshire was probably one large lake, and, as the land slowly rose, small lakes were formed.
Evidence of neolithic man is periodically traced at Astbury, where stone axes, arrowheads, and a funeral urn, with charred bones, have been found. All these had apparently been used by a neolithic race, which lived some 12,000 years before Christ.