Archaic Sculpturings. 133 



period of tlie carvings. This elaborate geometrical 

 and apparently astronomical system is not confined to cup 

 and ring markings. The late Neolithic architect, when laying 

 down, for example, the ground plan of the horned cairns of 

 Caithness, possessed these same curious notions. I have 

 worked out his ground plans carefully, and they show, just 

 like the rock-cuttings, the arc of a circle represented by the 

 side structures, and the cur\e of an ellipse at each end of the 

 monument. The positions of these curved figures were 

 studiously pre-arranged. We are apparently now on the 

 verge of obtaining a clear conception of how pre-historic 

 man worked to get his cardinal and solstitial points fixed, 

 and what he understood of the movements of the heavenly 

 bodies, both with regard to their motion, not only round 

 smaller foci, but in paths circular and elliptical. The appar- 

 ently isolated cairns, the groups of standing stones far dis- 

 tant from each other, and the detached sets of rock carvings 

 well removed from each other, may all form part of one 

 widely spread design ; and the surveyor of pre-historic monu- 

 ments should endea\our to show this relationship in his 

 charts.^* 



5a A scrutiny with the aid of ordnance survey charts of certain 

 sacred areas, covering great stretches of ground both in Scotland 

 and Ireland, as, for example, the area at Kilmartin, Argyle, or the 

 area on the north side of the River Boyne, above Drogheda, demon- 

 strate that locations marked by the erection of cairns and standing 

 stones and by rock scribings and by prominent topographical 

 features oi- points (often later chosen for the site of forts) are 

 arranged in an exact geometrical relationship. The enquirer may, 

 for instance, conveniently obtain evidence of this by drawing lines 

 between such locations and salient points on the map of the Boyne 

 district, which prefaces Messrs Coffey and Armstrong's Nev (Irange 

 and other Incised Tumuli in Irehmd. 1912. Again, large .stones 

 set as pointers or sentinels outwith the boundaries of stone circles 

 are not infrequent, as at Stonehenge and in Aberdeenshire at Bal- 

 quhairn and Diiiidstone, a circle probably of eleven stones origin- 

 ally (r.S.A.S.. XXXV., pp. 231, 238). That these sentinels are in- 

 timately associated with cup-marked stones seems cleai-, as in the 

 case of the triple concentric circles of .standing stones, with an 

 earthen ring, at Croft Morag, near Kenmore, Perthshire; for one 

 of the stones of the outside circle lying at the south-west has its 

 upper face, which is flusli with tlie grass, sculptured witb cups 



