1897.] on Early Man in Scotland. 399 



Bronze Age,* and which included about 400 distinct interments, it 

 would appear that in fifty-one of these localities the bodies had all 

 been cremated ; in sixty they had been buried in stone cists ; in 

 fifteen the same mound or cemetery furnished examples of both kinds 

 of sepulchre, and in the rest the kind of interment was not precisely 

 recorded. These diversities did not express tribal differences, but 

 seemed to have prevailed generally throughout Scotland. Both cre- 

 mation and inhumation are found in counties so remote from each 

 other as Sutherland in the north and "Wigtown in the south, in Fife 

 and the Lothians on the east, and in Argyll and the distant Hebrides 

 in the west, as well as in the intermediate districts. 



The cremation had been effected by wood fires, for in many 

 localities charcoal has been found in considerable quantity at the 

 place of interment. The heat generated was sufficient to reduce the 

 body to ashes, and to burn the organic matter out of the bones, which 

 fell into greyish-white fragments, often curiously cracked and con- 

 torted, which were not very friable. They were then collected and 

 usually placed in an urn of a form and size which we now call cinerary. 

 When a bank of sand or gravel was convenient, a hole three or four 

 feet deep was made and the urn lodged in it. Sometimes the urn 

 stood erect and a flat stone was placed across the mouth before the 

 hole was filled in with sand and earth ; at others a bed of compacted 

 earth, or of small stones, or of a flat stone, was made at the bottom 

 of the hole, and the urn, with its contents, was inverted. In some 

 cases the urn was protected by loose stones arranged around it. In 

 obviously exceptional instances, it may be perhaps of a tribal chief- 

 tain, a small stone cist was built to enclose the urn, and even a cairn 

 of stones was piled above and around to protect it and to mark the 

 spot. 



Cremated interments not contained in urns have been recorded in 

 a few instances, and in them the surrounding sand or gravel has 

 usually been discoloured from the blackened remains and charcoal 

 having to some extent become diffused through it. 



The largest examples of cinerary urns were from 12 to 16 inches 

 in height, wdth a flat narrow bottom, and 10 to 12 inches wide 

 at the mouth. About one-third the distance below the month the 

 urn swelled out to its widest diameter, and w^as surrounded by one 

 or two mouldings, between which and the mouth the outer surface 

 was often decorated with lines which ran horizontally, or vertically, 

 or obliquely ; sometimes they intersected and formed a chevron or a 

 diamond-shaped pattern. Below the mouldings, the surface was 

 without pattern, though sometimes raised into an additional simple 

 circular moulding. 



When the inhumation of an unburnt body was decided on, a rude 



* Most of these are recorded in the ' Archaeologica Scotica,' the ' Proceedings of 

 the JScottish Society of Antiquaries,' and Dr. Joseph Anderson's ' Scotland in Pagan 

 Times ' ; whilst others, in the author's note books, have not yet been published. 



