356 Field Meetings. 



many years ago, and the late Mr Robert Service reported to 

 the Antiquarian Society in substance as follows : — In the 

 whole of those opened, even small ones, composed of only 

 about a dozen cartloads of stones, there were found distinct 

 evidences of structure in the centre. The larger stones were 

 placed together, and these enclosed a cavity, in which were 

 found remains of charcoal and invariably very small pieces of 

 bone. In one were found also a small flat stone disc and a 

 chip off an arrow head. The body had undoubtedly been 

 burned and the ashes placed in the little cavity in the centre 

 of the cairn, and the stones heaped over it. One of the large 

 cairns on Auchencairn was opened about the same time, and 

 in it was found a stone-built cist, 3^ feet in length and very 

 narrow, containing remains of the skeleton of a small person, 

 who could not have been more than four or four and a half 

 feet in length. The body had been doubled up, as was usual 

 in early methods of inhumation. There were also urns, which 

 had probably contained food when placed in the rude stone 

 coffin, and a stone arrow head. 



Systematic excavations were carried out by the late Lord 

 Armstrong on his Northumberland estate of Great Tosson, 

 among the Cheviot hills, under the superintendence of a local 

 antiquary and author, Mr D. D. Dixon, who has minutely 

 chronicled the results in his volume on " Upper Coquetdale. " 

 Various forms of cairn were brought under observation there, 

 each of which has its counterpart on Craigdarroch ; and the 

 identity in structure and similarity of location — on a moor 

 between the 800 and 1000 feet contour lines — leads us to 

 reproduce the salient facts of the Northumberland inquiry. 

 The first cairn to be opened " was 20 feet in diameter, 3 feet 

 high, formed of earth and stones overgrown with heather, and 

 devoid of any method in the arrangement of the stones. At 

 or near the centre, in a cavity a little below the natural surface 

 of the ground, a small cinerary urn was discovered standing 

 upright, protected by a circle of stones set on edge around it, 

 with a larger slab placed on the top. A considerable quantity 

 of calcined bones and charcoal were found in the cairn on the 

 same level as the interment. The urn contained burnt bones ; 

 but it was so much broken that it was scarcely possible to 



