122 Archaic Sculpturings. 



of the Bronze Age stretching away into the chronological 

 depths, divisible into phases, century by century, according 

 to that era's slowly changing art motives and the evolution 

 of its domestic tools and pottery. The Bronze Age, with 

 more than its dozen stages (if one reckons, for example, by 

 the evolution of the most common of implements — the metal 

 axe), possessed its rock and stone sculpturings. Beyond 

 these very remote times, but with less clearness, a glimpse 

 can be obtained of an era when metals were so scarce as to 

 be almost unknown. Of this transitional period Galloway 

 possesses perhaps the most important British site. On the 

 site was discovered the debris of a village— its broken pots 

 and dishes, beads, ornaments, axes, choppers, saws, 

 scrapers, and a lavish variety of other tools and weapons. ^ 



Behind that time again was the late Neolithic stage, also 

 exceedingly well represented in Galloway by a semi-subter- 

 ranean village in the Mye Plantation, Stoneykirk parish, 2 and 

 an ordinary overground site near Glenluce.' 



Of the easily perishable relics of these ancient civilisa- 

 tions, such as wooden and textile objects, few survive, but 

 of the imperishable things in granite, lignite, porphyry, grey- 

 wacke, and other stones, there is still a goodly show. 



I have endeavoured above to marshal them in their 

 chronological sequence and to value them in the fulness of 

 their centuries, but only tentatively, for the science of pre- 

 historic archaeology is still in its infancy. 



I. — Cups and Rings. 



I shall now first of all deal with the earliest known 

 Scottish carvings (excepting those of the little known 



1 Some thousands of the relics from this site have been ex- 

 hibited and described (Scottish Exhibition of National History, 

 1911, Preh. Catalogue, pp. 820-822, items 1-42). 



2 Beport on the Excavation of Pre-historic Pile-Structures in 

 Pits, in Wigtownshire (Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot., vol. xxxvii., 1903, pp. 

 370-415); and A Galloway Stone-Age Village (Trans. Dumfries and 

 Galloway Soc, N.S., vol. xx., 1909, pp. 74-95); Scot. Ex., 1911, 

 Cat., p. 817, items 4-6, and p. 869, items J and K. 



3 Scot. Ex., 1911, Cat., p. 817, items 3 and 8. 



