Welsh Journals

unknown. Other earthworks reported by Mr. B. Morris on Kilvey Hill, Swansea, and on Harding's Down in Gower are hill-slope cattle enclosures, but another, near Oxwich, reported by Mr. F. V. Emery, seems to belong to the numerous Gower class of promontory forts, which Mrs. Audrey Williams' excava- tions years ago proved to have been fortified farmsteads occupied in Early Iron Age and Roman times. II. ROMAN AND POST-ROMAN GLAMORGAN by LESLIE ALCOCK, M.A., F.S.A. 1. Excavation of a hill-fort in Cwrt-yr-Ala Park, near Dinas Powis. A small but strongly defended hill-fort, set on the northern tip of a hill overlooking Michaelstone-le-Pit, has been under excavation by the Department of Archaeology, University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire, since January, 1954. The work is financed largely by grants from the Board of Celtic Studies. Illustrated interim reports have already appeared in the Bulletin of the Board (November, 1955 and May, 1957), and their con- clusions may be briefly summarized here. The occupation of the hill-top goes back to the pre-Roman Iron Age, which is represented by flint implements and by sherds of black pottery jars and bowls akin to those of the English Iron Age 'A' tradition. Iron Age 'A' pottery is altogether rare in Wales, being well represented only at Merthyr Mawr Warren, but it seems possible that further work will lead to the recognition of an 'A' province along both shores of the Severn Sea. Character- istic Romano-British objects including pottery, glass and a coin suggest that occupation continued, sporadically at least, through- out the Roman period. But it is the centuries after the departure of the Romans- hitherto only poorly documented in the archaeology of Wales- which are producing the richest assemblage of finds. These include imported pottery-wine jars, cooking pots, mixing bowls, and fine table-ware-of types well-known from sites of the 5th to 7th centuries A .D. in North Wales, Cornwall, Ireland and Scotland. Some at least of this pottery, especially the wine jars and the fine table ware, is believed to come from the Mediterranean. Other links with the Celtic West are provided by a lead model of a bronze penannular brooch of a type current in Ireland but not known from Wales; and by bronze-smiths' crucibles of a distinctive form, known from Ireland and Scotland, More surprising is the discovery of well over a hundred sherds from fine glass vessels of forms which are best known from the graves of the pagan Anglo-Saxons. It is generally believed that these vessels were manufactured on the Rhine, where Roman