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NEOLITHIC CIVILIZATION
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historic remains now found upon it. Stone implements are generally distributed over this surface. They are sometimes scarce, sometimes concentrated in considerable numbers on small areas. Not unfrequently the sites of hearths are found; sometimes there are small pits about three feet in diameter and about two feet in depth, the interior filled with wood charcoal, the edges showing much evidence of fire. I suggest that these may possibly have been used for burning pottery. I have found several such on, the buried prehistoric surface of East Essex."

Mr. Warren describes some special sites on these prehistoric floors, containing large quantities of charcoal, pottery and flint implements, which he regards as evidence of some kind of industry. Beneath one of these special sites on a prehistoric floor there was discovered in 1910 a human skeleton buried in a contracted position and having apparently the hands and feet bound to the body by ropes of sand-grass. The locality in which this important discovery was made is near Walton-on-Naze. Here the sea is disintegrating the coast-line, and in recent times its action has exposed the following strata:

(1) A low cliff of tidal silt eight to ten feet in height.

(2) A prehistoric floor over which were found "worked flints, broken pottery and rounded lumps of burnt clay, the whole mixed with much wood charcoal."

(3) The skeleton was a little over two feet