210 PRINCIPAL SIR WILLIAM TURNER ON 



configuration of the skull. We have next to consider interments where the people 

 did not build graves, but availed themselves of the opportunities afforded in their 

 respective localities and deposited their dead in the caves or rock shelters provided 

 by nature. 



Caves and clefts in rocks have been in use in Scotland both as dwellings and as 

 places of interment, and were noted many years ago by Chalmers in Caledonia and 

 by Sir D. Wilson in Arcluvologia. Examples bad been explored on the face of 

 sandstone rock overhanging inland rivers like the Esk, the Teviot and the Jed, but 

 they have been more frequently recognised in sea cliffs, which in prehistoric days 

 formed in many places the coastline and were directly washed by the waves. When 

 the earlier beaches subsequently became uplifted, the cliffs were removed from the 

 sea by an interval which corresponded to the breadth and height of the newer raised 

 beach or beaches. 



In 1847 a cave at Lower Warburton, Montrose, about half a mile from the estuary 

 of the Esk, 15 feet above high-water mark, was examined by Alexander Bryson.* 

 It contained bones of existing mammals, many of which were split, shells of edible 

 molluscs, coarse pottery and a few fragments of human bones. The floor of the 

 cave consisted of rounded stones, as if from the sea-beach, upon which was placed 

 a thick stratum of dark loam and sea-shells, on the surface of which a layer of 

 mammalian bones occupied the width of the cave. 



In 1875 Miss C. Maclagan described caves at Wemyss on the Fife Coast, f the 

 walls of which were decorated with a remarkable series of sculpturings. Their 

 characters had previously been embodied by Sir James Simpson in his Archaic 

 Sculpturing s,\ in which he stated that bones of existing mammals, frequently split' 

 so as to remove the marrow, sea-shells, perforated stones and implements of deer- 

 horn had been found in the rubbish of the floor of some of the caves. 



In 1873 the Rev. R. J. Mapleton described § the contents of a cave found in 1862 

 at Duntroon, Argyllshire, about 23 feet above high-water mark and 186 feet distant 

 from it. The floor was formed of shingle, with sea-shells of several species, the 

 bones of a red deer, ash, charcoal and scrapers of flint. A human skeleton in the 

 sitting posture and bones of at least six persons were exposed amidst the loose 

 stones which occupied the grave. No description of the characters of the bones 

 has, I believe, been recorded. In 1875 and later a cave was explored on the sea- 

 coast at Borness, Kirkcudbrightshire, the floor of which was about 27 feet above 

 high-water mark. Its contents were most carefully described || and found to consist 

 of burnt wood, bones of birds, mammals, sea-shells, numerous bone, stone, bronze 

 and iron implements, fragments of two human skeletons ; also a part of a cup of 



* Eilin. New /'hit. Join:. 1850 ; Howden and M'Bain in Proc. Roy. Phys. Soc. Edin., vol. iii, 1867; Proc. Soc. 

 Antiq. Scot., vol. x, 1875. 



I Proc Soc. Antiq. Scot, vol. \i, L876. :: Idem, vol. vi, 18G8. § Idem, vol. x, p. 30(3, 1875. 



|| BRUCE CLARKE, A. J. Corrie, R. J. Johnson and A. R, Hunt in Proc. Soc. Antiq. Scot., vol. x, pp. 470, 499 

 1875 ; vols, xi, ]>. 305, and xii, p. 669. 



