Little London Pair

"The closeness of the soil...and the depth to which we had to descend, occupied more thanusually our time, and the evening was far spent before we had reached such a depth...as to satisfy our curiosity; but the next day, on which we did not proceed to Yatesbury...the men, under the superintendence of Mr Money Kyrle, came to a layer of the black substance, burnt straw apparently, and below that to a most curious deposit, a cist, at the depth of 8 ft., formed at the level of the adjoining land, containing an unusual quantity of burnt human bones. These had been deposited in the hollow of a tree, and a piece of the cleft wood, the side of the tree, had been placed over it. From the peculiar clayey and damp quality of the earth, it was so greatly decayed, that ot might be difficult to determine its former substance, although it appeared by the remains of fibres, and lines of the grain of the wood, to have been oak; the wood was 4 ft long by [2.5] broad and 18 inches thick, being reduced in places by compression. About the middle of this, on the apex of the mass of bones, and beneath the wooden cover, lay a bronze blade of a hunting spear [the knife dagger]; the two rivets which had fixed it to its staff remained in their respective holes, but the metal, from the extreme moisture of the situation, had become oxidised throughout, and when dried extremely brittle and friable; it was [4.125] inches in length, and [1.5] inch in breadth at the broadest part."