138 ANNALS OF SCOTTISH NATURAL HISTORY 



for the manufacture of arrow-heads and scrapers, flint does 

 not seem to have attained the same importance in Scotland 

 as the raw material provided by nature for the manufacture 

 of articles used by Neolithic man, as was the case in England 

 and Ireland. 



Although there is ample evidence of the nature of the im- 

 plements and weapons manufactured by Neolithic man, and 

 of his methods of interment in rock shelters and chambered 

 cairns, no traces of built dwellings which can be ascribed to 

 the people of this period have been discovered. Doubtless 

 their habitations were constructed of loose stones and turf, 

 and sun-dried clay, or of the skins of animals killed in the 

 chase spread over the branches of trees, which, from their 

 fragile and destructible character, have not been preserved. 



In the course of time stone and bone, readily procurable, 

 and which are directly provided by nature for the use of 

 man, gave place to materials which required for their manu- 

 facture considerable skill and knowledge. The introduction 

 of bronze as a substance out of which useful articles could 

 be made, marked an important step in human development, 

 and could only take place after men had learnt by observa- 

 tion the ores of copper and tin, and by experiment the 

 methods of extracting the metals from them, and the pro- 

 portions in which they should be combined in the alloy in 

 order to secure the necessary hardness. So far as Scotland 

 is concerned, bronze must have been introduced from without; 

 its manufacture could not have been of indigenous develop- 

 ment, as the ores of tin and copper do not occur in North 

 Britain. Doubtless it came from the southern part of our 

 island, and was extensively employed in South Britain long 

 before it became substituted in the north for the more 

 primitive materials. 



There is abundant information that Scotland had a 

 Bronze Age. Swords, spears, bucklers, bracelets, rings, fish- 

 hooks, axes, chisels, sickles, and other implements made of 

 this metal have been found in considerable numbers. These 

 objects occur sometimes singly, at others in collections or 

 hoards in peat mosses, or even at the bottom of lochs and 

 rivers, or buried in the soil as if they had been placed there 

 with a view to concealment, and then, through the death or 



