June 8, 1882] 



NATURE 



127 



subject. Since that time a host of enthusiastic observers 

 has arisen over Europe, and innumerable examples of 

 " cups and circles " have been discovered and described. 

 It is difficult to account for the fascination that allures 

 men to the study and pursuit of these "pitted stones." 

 They are neither beautiful, nor intrinsically valuable. 

 They are often earth-fast boulders, too large for transport, 

 and unsuitable for " collections." But there is an element 

 of mystery about them, and the mysterious is often more 

 attractive than the beautiful or the useful. They piqne 

 the curiosity of the ordinary observer by the obvious sug- 

 gestion that they have a story to tell if they could be 

 made to speak ; and they whet the ardour of the scientific 

 investigator by the equally obvious suggestions that they 

 are the products of a definite human purpose, which may 

 be discoverable from an examination and comparison of 

 their special characteristics. Probably no series of 

 archaeological remains has been more carefully examined, 

 more minutely described, or more copiously illustrated, 

 and if the accumulation of such a mass of detailed infor- 

 mation regarding their typical forms and characteristics 

 over wide areas should ultimately fail in determining the 

 nature of the purpose or purposes for which they were 

 produced it cannot fail to add largely to the extent and 

 precision of our knowledge of an essentially obscure 

 subject. 



It is certainly a matter of great interest, whatever may 

 prove to be its general significance, that "cup-stones" 

 and "pitted stones," which are in many cases analogous 

 to those in the Eastern Hemisphere, are found in the 

 United States and other parts of the Western Continent. 

 Perhaps the most remarkakable of those found in the 

 United States is one at Ironton, in Lawrence County, 

 Ohio, which was first brought to the notice of European 

 archaeologists by Prof. Daniel Wilson, in the Proceedings 

 of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland for June, 1875. 

 It is a boulder of grey sandstone 3 feet long, 2 feet 7 inches 

 wide, and a foot and a half high, weighing between 1000 

 and 1200 pounds. The surface of the stone is pitted all 

 over by about 116 cups, whose average diameter is ii 

 inches and their depth about | inch, and on one side of 

 the block there are several grooves 4 or 5 inches long, 

 shallow and circularly hollowed in the bottom, so that "a 

 cylindrical stone applied in the direction of its length 

 would have produced the grooves, and its end by rotation 

 the cup-shaped cavities." Another cupped boulder of 

 granite occurs at Niantic, in New London County, Con- 

 necticut. It has only six cups, varying from about 2 inches 

 to 3jt inches diameter, and from j inch to almost 1 inch in 

 depth. Mr. Rau does not notice a still more remarkable 

 boulder of granite in Forsyth County, Georgia, 9 feet 

 long, 4i feet high, and 3 feet wide, of which Prof. Wilson 

 has given a figure. Along one side of the boulder is a 

 row of cups, eighteen in number, connected by an incised 

 line or gutter, while the face of the boulder is covered 

 with markings of single or double concentric circles, sur- 

 rounding small cups in the centre. In some cases two of 

 these circles are connected by a straight gutter. Two 

 very large boulders on the bank of the Ohio, a few miles 

 below Manchester, in Adams County, have been seen by 

 Dr. Hill, but are not more precisely described than that 

 they are of sandstone, the one having twenty-nine and 

 the other thirty-seven cups. A large cupped boulder at 

 Orizaba, in Mexico, has been figured in Lord Kings- 

 borough's " Mexican Antiquities." Two boulders of 

 sandstone in an old Indian town in Santa Barbara County, 

 California, are covered with conical-shaped excavations 

 and cup-shaped depressions. The largest is 25 feet long 

 and 10 feet wide, and shows twenty-five excavations from 

 6 inches to 26 inches diameter at the surface, and 5 to 16 

 inches deep. In one instance a groove is cut between 

 two of the basins. 



" Cup-stones " or " pitted stones " of small size are also 

 frequently found in the United States. The first of these 



that has been noticed as obtained from the Indian 

 Mounds in Ohio, was described and figured in '"The 

 Ancient Mounds of the Mississippi Valley," by Squier 

 and Davis (Washington, 1848), and is now in the Black- 

 more Museum, Salisbury. It is a small block of sand- 

 stone, 6 inches by 8 inches, weighing between thirty and 

 forty pounds, and presenting on its surface three detached 

 cups — two confluent, one half-finished, and several which 

 are apparently just commenced. They are slightly oval 

 in shape, about ii inches in greatest diameter, and seven- 

 eighths of an inch in depth. Still smaller stones, often 

 water-rolled greywacke pebbles, with one or more cup- 

 shaped indentations on their flattish sides are extremely 

 common. The cavities are rough and irregular, and the 

 explanation given of their purpose is that they were pro- 

 bably used by the Indians for cracking hickory nuts. 

 Another variety of "cup-stone" with regularly rounded 

 and well-smoothed cups is regarded as paint-mortars. 

 But while some of the larger boulders with basin-like 

 cavities, such as those from Santa Barbara Count}', Cali- 

 fornia, may have been used as mortars for triturating 

 grain, it is obvious that such an explanation cannot apply 

 to the boulders with smaller cups, or to those cases in 

 which the cups are hollowed in the perpendicular surfaces 

 of stones and rocks. 



Such cups, often surrounded by concentric rings, or by 

 broken rings with a gutter passing from the central cup 

 outwards through the part where the rings are interrupted, 

 are found abundantly in the British Islands, and in 

 France, Switzerland, Germany, and Scandinavia. They 

 are sculptured on rocks, boulders, on monolithic and 

 on megalithic monuments, on the stones of dolmens and 

 cists, and on stones built into the walls of underground 

 dwellings. Thus they occur in close connection with the 

 habitations and the graves of prehistoric man in central 

 and north-western Europe. In a few cases in Scandinavia 

 they occur on sepulchral structures that are assigned to 

 the Stone Age, but their associations, so far as these are 

 determinable, are chiefly with the Bronze Age. In 

 Britain, and especially in Scotland, their associations are 

 largely with the Iron Age, and the Age of Bronze ; but 

 few, if any well- authenticated instances of their occurrence 

 in association with the typical objects of the Age of Stone 

 are upon record. On the other hand small, portable 

 cupped stones have been found in cists and grave-mounds 

 which are attributed to the Stone and Bronze Ages, both 

 in Great Britain and Ireland. In Brittany the large 

 stones of the dolmens are frequently sculptured with a 

 variety of rude figures, among which cups and circles not 

 unfrequently occur. 



Perhaps the most remarkable examples in Scotland are 

 the rock-sculptures at Achnabreac in Argyleshire, de- 

 scribed and figured in Prof. Simpson's work, and a rock- 

 surface on the shore of Loch Tay, recently described by 

 Mr. J. Romilly Allen. Prof. Simpson described nearly a 

 hundred examples of rock and stone surfaces thus sculp- 

 tured, but this number has been more than doubled 

 during the last year by two observers. Mr. William Jolly 

 and Mr. Romilly Allen, the former working in the 

 northern, and the latter in the central, districts of Scot- 

 land. In England the most curious examples are those 

 on the moor at Ilkley, in Yorkshire, described in the 

 Journal of the British Archaeological Association (1879), 

 by Mr. Romilly Allen. In Ireland the most striking groups 

 are those on the stones of the great chambered cairn at 

 New Grange, in the valley of the Boyne, and those asso- 

 ciated with the remarkable cairns in the Lough Crew 

 Hills, described by the late Eugene Conwell. 



Many theories have been advanced with reference to 

 the presumable purpose of such " cups and circles." It 

 has been suggested that their purpose was useful, that it 

 was ornamental, that it was commemorative, and that it 

 was religious. The utilitarian theory is disposed of by 

 their position in situations where use of any kind is 



