216 PRINCIPAL SIR WILLIAM TURNER ON 



skull B, its dolichocephalic proportions, or its large cubic capacity, adverse to its 

 being from the neolithic maker of the implements found in the cave ; an argument 

 that its size and capacity harmonised rather with those of people of more modern 

 times does not necessarily confirm it as being a relatively recent introduction into 

 the cave in which it was found, for skulls undoubtedly neolithic have been obtained 

 with large capacity. 



Dr Anderson in his memoir emphasised the discovery of harpoons of deer-horn 

 in the MacArthur cave as the first examples of the kind seen in. a cave in Scot- 

 land, though similar implements had been found in a refuse mound at Caisteal 

 nan Gillean in the island of Oronsay. He also referred to a specimen from the 

 neolithic stratum of the Victoria cave, Settle,* and others from Kent's cavern 

 at Torquay associated with implements of palaeolithic type. Since the publication 

 of his memoir a rock shelter at Druimvargie, Oban,t was cleared of its talus, and 

 a refuse-heap of shells and broken bones, from which waterworn pebbles, borers 

 and chisels of bone, together with portions of two harpoons of deer-horn, were 

 obtained. 



In an article commenting on the Oban caves M. Boule called attention \ to 

 similar harpoons found in caverns in France by himself and by M. Cartailhac, also 

 to their discovery by M. Piette in the cavern of Mas-d'Azil. By these observers 

 harpoons of this type were regarded as occurring in a stratum of, or later than, the 

 age of the reindeer which had been succeeded by the red deer, i.e. at a time inter- 

 mediate to the palaeolithic and neolithic epochs. M. Boule considered therefore that 

 the archaeological data of the Oban caves are not to be regarded as neolithic, as was 

 stated by Dr Anderson and myself, but, like the discoveries in the Mas-d'Azil, inter- 

 mediate between it and the palaeolithic epoch. 



In a memoir § published last year, Mr Henderson Bishop gave a detailed account 

 of his excavations on a sandhill, Cnoc Sligeach in Oronsay, in which were beds of 

 sea-shells with food refuse and fragments of charcoal. Implements of stone, flint, 

 bone and horn, including portions of harpoons, were figured. He regarded the 

 harpoons as for the most part of characteristic Azilian type, and as evidence of the 

 culture of the time when the sandhill was occupied and the refuse-heap was in 

 process of accumulation by the islanders. He concluded that this period was directly 

 correlated with that of the occupation of the Oban caves. 



In connection with the assumed relation of the Oban and Oronsay relics with the 

 Azilian stage in the French caves in which harpoons of this type have been dis- 

 covered, the French naturalists have associated them with a modification in the 

 species of the fauna, remains of which have also been found, with the disappearance 

 of the reindeer and the advent of the red deer, a difference which expressed an 



* Boyd Dawkins, Gave Hunting. 



t Robert Munro in Prehistoric Scotland, p. 54, 1899. 



I L Anthropologic, vol. vii, p. 319, 1896. 



§ Proc. Soc. Antiq. Scot., vol. xlviii, p. 52, 1914. 



