PARISH OF ALWINTON. 425 



bottom. The vipper part, for a depth of 2^ in., is ornamented with 

 a herring-bone pattern of finely-drawn lines made by a sharp- 

 pointed instrument, the rest of the vase being plain. Nine feet 

 north-west-by-west from this vase was a deposit of burnt bones, 

 those of an adult, probably a man, laid upon the natural surface. 



Thus it appears that the cairn had covered nine interments, six 

 of unburnt and three of burnt bodies ; and it is not a little singular 

 that no weapon, implement, or ornament was met with in association 

 with any of the burials. This fact (and there are many others like 

 it) is certainly a difficult one to explain when the question with 

 regard to the purpose of placing various articles with the dead 

 is considered, and the view is held that they were meant to be of 

 service in another scene or stage of existence. For here we have 

 a number of burials taking place under circumstances implying 

 much pains and labour in the disposition of the several interments, 

 and yet we find that nothing which might be supposed to be 

 needed for a future use had been deposited with the dead. On the 

 whole, fully admitting all the difficulties in the way, and not being 

 at all able to explain them even to myself, I incline to the belief that, 

 where weapons, implements, and ornaments are found accompanying 

 an interment, they were placed there under the impression that 

 in an after-life they would, in one way or another, be useful to the 

 person with whose body they were associated. The subject how- 

 ever will be found more fully discussed in the Introduction. 



In the mound, or rather in what was left of it, were found two 

 chippings of flint (one of them showing on its edge signs of use), 

 and a thin disk of fine-grained sandstone, 2^ in. in diameter and 

 ^ in. in thickness, with a shallow depression at the centre on each 

 side. It is worn quite smooth (apparently by rubbing) the whole 

 way round, on the edge as well as on the surface of both faces ; it 

 can scarcely have been a ' tool-stone,^ like the circular and oval 

 implements of somewhat similar appearance so frequently found in 

 Ireland and Denmark, for there are no signs upon it of its having 

 been used for hammering. 



CCIII. On the side of the river Coquet, opposite to that on 

 which the last-described cairn was situated, and to the west of the 

 village of Harbottle, upon a spur of the higher ridge which bounds 

 the valley, were placed two cairns. One had been completely rifled 

 long ago ; the other I examined. It was 32 ft. in diameter, and 

 still 2| ft. high, though some of the stones had been removed from 



