1867.] Archeology and Ethnology. 8.3 



it would be contrary to all the facts adduced to arrive at any 

 conclusion but this : — that the builders of the lake-dwellings were a 

 branch of the Celtic population of Switzerland, but that the earlier 

 settlements belong to the prehistoric period, and had already fallen 

 into decay before the Celts took their place in the history of 

 Europe." 



Mr. Laing's book on the " Prehistoric Kemains of Caithness,"* 

 has been received with small favour by the antiquaries of that 

 county, and his conclusion that the human remains found by him 

 in certain kists and mounds belong to the Early Stone-period, has 

 excited a rather warm controversy ; while his assertion that the 

 Caithness people of that time were addicted to cannibalism, has 

 been indignantly repudiated by every patriotic Scot. The last two 

 numbers of the ' Anthropological Keview ' contain several papers 

 by Messrs. Anderson, Shearer, Cleghorn, Petrie, and Dr Hunt, 

 in which, Mr. Laing's statements and inferences are severely 

 criticized, and the opinion of these authors seems to be that the 

 remains are very recent, probably not more than three or four 

 centuries old. The principal series of graves are said to be the 

 burial places of shipwrecked seamen, and to occur in a raised 

 beach, not in an artificial mound. That some stone implements 

 have been found is admitted, but they do not seem to have been in 

 any case discovered by the explorers themselves ; but even if their 

 authenticity is hereafter proved, as Mr. Shearer remarks, "the 

 whole thing is now so mixed up together as to render any of the 

 things in a scientific inquiry utterly useless." Mr. Laing is thus 

 charged by these authors with having made a most extraordinary 

 series of blunders, and to have been rather careless of ensuring the 

 authenticity and isolation of specimens from different localities and 

 of different ages. 



The Congress of the Archaeological Institute, held in London 

 during the past summer, deserves notice here chiefly on account 

 of the luminous address delivered on the occasion by Sir John 

 Lubbock,t in which that zealous ethnologist, antiquary, and 

 zoologist, sketched out the present condition of that portion of 

 archaeological science which relates to what he terms the " Primeval 

 Period," chiefly with a view of showing that the method hitherto 

 employed almost entirely in geology and zoology had been applied 

 to archaeology with the same success as had attended its use in 

 the former branches of knowledge. By the term " Primeval 

 Period,'"' Sir John indicated that extending from the first appearance 

 of man down to the commencement of the Christian era, and to 



* ' The Prehistoric Eemaina of Caithness.' By Samuel Laing, Esq., M.P., 

 FG.S. With Notes on the Human Remains, by Thomas H. Huxley, F.R.S. 

 Williams & Norgate. 



t Our notice of this Address is based on the Eeport of it which appeared in 

 the ' Athenaeum ' for July 21st, 1866. 



g2 



