236 



NA TURE 



[January 6. 1898 



be little doubt that these implements rank, along with the dug- 

 out canoes, as the oldest relics made with human hands which 

 have up to this time been found in Scotland, and that they 

 belong to the earliest period of occupation by Neolithic man. 



After the oscillations in the relative level of land and sea had 

 ceased, and the beach found at the present day had been formed, 

 evidence of the presence of Neolithic man and of mammals, both 

 wild and domesticated, such as now exist in Scotland, becomes 

 greatly multiplied. 



Shallow caves or rock shelters situated in the cliff which 

 bounds the esplanade at Oban Bay, which, after being closed for 

 centuries by a landslide from the adjacent height, had recently 

 been quarried into in obtaining stone for building purposes, 

 were described by the lecturer.' The caves were as a rule loo 

 yards inland, and about 30 feet or more above the present high- 

 water mark. They had, no doubt, been formed by the action 

 of the waves at the period of formation of the 25-30 foot beach, 

 for the floor of one of the caves was covered by a layer of gravel 

 and pebbles, which had obviously been washed there when the sea 

 had had access to it. 



In these caves, bones representing fifteen human skeletons, 

 men, women, and children were found ; also bones of the Bos 

 longifrons, red and roe deer, pig, dog, goat, badger, and otter, 

 shells of edible molluscs, bones of fish, and claws of crabs ; 

 flint scrapers, hammer stones, implements of bone and horn 

 fashioned into the form of pins, borers and chisel-shaped 

 instruments. In one cave several harpoons or fish spears made 

 of the horns of deer were obtained ; similar in form to those 

 found in the Victoria Cave, Settle, in Kent's Cavern, and in the 

 grotto of La Madelaine, France, which in some of these 

 instances have been associated with Paleolithic objects. 



An account was then given of the construction and contents 

 of the chambered horned cairns in Caithness and the north-west 

 of Scotland, which have been so carefully investigated and de- 

 scribed by Dr. Joseph Anderson ("Scotland in Pagan Times," 

 Edinburgh, 1886). The presence of incinerated bones and of 

 unburnt skeletons showed the cairns to have been places of in- 

 terment, whilst flint flakes and scrapers, bone and polished stone 

 implements, and shallow vessels of coarse clay, associated them 

 with Neolithic man, obviously the same race as the builders of 

 the English long barrows. 



Stone abounds in Scotland, and the polished stone implements 

 which have been found in every county, in the soil and near the 

 surface of the ground, are often of large size, and beautifully 

 ground and polished. Flint, on the other hand, is confined to a 

 few localities, as the island of Mull and limited areas in the 

 counties of Banff and Aberdeen. The nodules arc as a rule 

 small in size, and though adapted 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 imple- 

 jTients and weapons manufactured by Neolithic man, and of his 

 jnethods of interment in rock shelters and chambered cairns, no 

 traces of built dwellings which can be ascribed to the people of 

 ihis 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 require for their manufacture consider- 

 able skill and knowledge. The introduction of bronze as a sub- 

 stance 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 observation the ores of copper and tin, 

 and by experiment the methods of extracting the metals from them , 

 and the proportions 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 ; it3 manufacture could not have been of indigenous 

 development, 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. 



i For a detailed description, see papers by Dr. Joseph Anderson .and the 

 author in Proc. Scot. Soc. Antiquaries, 1895. 



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 conceal- 

 ment, and then, through the death or removal of their owners, 

 had been lost sight of. In many instances these weapons and 

 implements are elegant in design, show great mechanical ability 

 in their construction, and are ornamented with much taste and 

 skill. Instances also are not uncommon in which objects of 

 bronze are found in the sepulchres of the period. 



In the study of the Bronze Age in Scotland a want is ex- 

 perienced similar to that felt in a review of the Neolithic period. 

 There are no buildings which can be distinctly regarded as 

 dwelling-places for the men of this time. With them, however, 

 as in the Polished Stone Age, there is evidence of the mode in 

 which they disposed of their dead friends and relatives. Inter- 

 ments which there are good grounds for associating with these 

 people, have been exposed in the formation of roads and rail- 

 ways, and in agricultural operations. Where the surface of the 

 ground has not been cultivated or otherwise disturbed, in almost 

 every county tumuli, mounds, hillocks and cairns occur, the ex- 

 ploration of which has in many cases yielded interesting results. 

 In no instance, however, have chambered cairns, divided into 

 compartments, and possessing an entrance passage, been found 

 associated with articles made of bronze. The sepulchral 

 arrangements of the period possessed a greater simplicity than 

 is shown in the chambered cairn. 



The interments in the Bronze Age were sometimes that of a 

 single individual in a knoll or mound, or under a cairn artificially 

 constructed, and now overgrown with grass, heather and whin 

 bushes, or, as is not uncommon, in a collection of sand or gravel 

 near the sea shore, or on a river bank, or in the moraine of some 

 long-vanished glacier. At other times, in similar localities, two 

 to six interments had been made as if in a family burying 

 ground. At others the interments were much more numerous, 

 and represented doubtless the cemetery of a tribe or clan ; one 

 uf the best known of these was observed some years ago at Law 

 Park, near St. Andrews, in which about twenty interments were 

 recognised. In another at Alloa, twenty-two separate interments 

 were exposed. Quite recently, immediately to the east of Edin- 

 burgh, in the districts now known aslnveresk and Musselburgh, 

 not less than fifty interments of this period have been brought 

 to light, in connection with building operations, which implies 

 that then, as now, this part of the country was settled and had 

 a considerable population. 



Two very distinct types of interment prevailed, viz. Cremation, 

 with or without cinerary urns ; and Inhumation, the unburnt 

 body being enclosed in a stone cist or coffin. From an analysis 

 of 144 localities in Scotland of burials which may be associated 

 with the Bronze Age,' and which included about 400 distinct in- 

 terments, 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 cremation and inhumation are found 

 in counties so remote from each other as Sutherland in the 

 north and Wigton 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 contorted, 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 



i Most of these are recorded in the " Arcbseologica Scotica," the Pro- 

 ceedings of the Scottish 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. 



NO. I 47 I, VOL. 57] 



