Welsh Journals

ARCHAEOLOGICAL NOTES TRIAL EXCAVATIONS AT BRYN ELLYLLION, MOLD. The general position of the site of the tumulus in which the famous gold ornament was found, in 1833, has always been re- cognized. Modem houses and their gardens now occupy the area, but it seemed possible that some trace of the tumulus might still exist, close to the fence, in the field which lies behind these houses. It was clearly desirable that the possibility of the survival of some part of the tumulus should be put to the test, and by kind permission of the landowner, Mr. J. Bradburne Price, members of the Society in co-operation with the Department of Prehistoric Archaeology of the University of Liverpool, carried out a small exploratory excavation on 2nd May, 1953. The house and garden of Haulfryn stand on the crest of a small ridge, and the tumulus was almost certainly sited likewise. A trench was accordingly dug at right-angles to the back boundary fence of the garden of Haulfryn." The trench was thus aligned approximately due north and South, and its western side was 22ft. 6ins east of the junction of the northern (back) and western (side), fences of the garden in question. The trench excavated was 20ft. long and 3ft. wide, and was dug to a depth of 2ft. The section revealed a consistent stratigraphy of 10 inches of topsoil overlaying a light gravelly soil clearly of natural deposition, and, in fact, characteristic of the Drift in that locality. There were no indications of any arti- ficial structure. It is now evident that the tumulus, which may have been quite small, was entirely destroyed in 1833, or when the houses were built in the early 1920s. Any new study of the problems connected with the gold ornament may now be undertaken free from the uncertainty that some evidence might still survive in the field. T. G. E. Powell. I. Ellis Davics, The Prehistoric and Roman Remains of Flintshire. (Cardiff, 1949) pp. 256, ff.. ROMAN COIN FOUND AT MANCOT Mr. Brian Allen, digging in his garden at Bankfield, Mancot, found an intetesting sestertius of Caracalla, minted in the second year of his reign (A.D. 215), struck at Emisa in Asia Minor. It is an unusual provincial type with a temple reverse. GRAHAM Webster