Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 56

A grave found in the churchyard at Dunbar was lined with red sandstone slabs. It was aligned west-east and contained a poorly preserved extended skeleton accompanied by an earthenware pot. This practice is unusual but not unknown in Christian graves. Three short cists were discovered by workmen. Only one could be examined and it contained a crouched skeleton.

The carving consists of a returning spiral and can be paralleled by a stone at North Balfern, near Kirkinner.

The crude cist comprised walls of rough unhewn sandstone blocks (not slabs) and boulders and a cover slab. It contained cremated human bone identified as an adult and a flint knife.

The stone was built into the wall of the ruined chapel so that the inscription could not be seen until the stone was moved. Part of the inscription was transcribed as 'Philippus carved (these) runes', the remainder was indistinct. It is suggested that there are two separate inscriptions which were carved at different times.

A circular cairn at Linburn Plantation covered a central circle of stones around a pit containing burnt bone, charcoal and two flint knives. There was evidence of in situ burning. Four round cairns in the parish of Muirkirk were examined. Only one had a central cist. Pottery, charcoal and a flint flake were recovered. An isolated deposit of burnt bone may have been associated with a cinerary urn found there in 1899.

A knife-shaped stone implement was found in a shell midden along with fish bones and scale, charcoal and fire-cracked stones. It is suggested that it functioned as a scraper, and was used to remove cooked fish skins.

A description of six grave slabs found before 1857 is reproduced along with the account of further stones made in the 18th century. One of these commemorated a Johanna Bullock. A coped grave-cover was found in the churchyard at Ancrum.

The appearance of the Campbeltown tools, taken as a whole, is that of a poor upper palaeolithic series, chiefly consisting of flakes showing a Magdalenian aspect. These flakes were detached from nuclei, the angles of which are sometimes battered, many show no re-working, but numerous notches resulting from use; a small number are re-worked into end scrapers; and one shows a small point in the centre of its semicircular end. The marine 25-30-foot terrace on which the tools were found corresponds also to the Azilian caves at Oban. The difference in period between\r\nthe two groups cannot, then, be very considerable. What characterises nearly all the flints gathered from the Azilian kitchen-middens and contemporary littoral caves of Scotland is that they are not a normal outfit of tools, but with the residue of tools used to such a degree that they were no longer capable of further service. Flint being scarce, the smallest fragments had been used until they were almost completely destroyed. Flakers made of stone, bone and deer-horn were also present in the Azilian deposits of Scotland. The theory that they were used for detaching the edible parts of limpets from their shells is discounted. Bone harpoons from a variety of deposits are also considered.

A revision of the Ptolemaic geography of Scotland based on new archaeological discoveries. In Ptolemy's map there is an eastern coast-line which for all its\r\nfaults is unmistakably clear from the Tweed as far as the Moray Firth. Also it may be noted that among the land-stations, although for the most part their positions seem unlike anything that we know of the topography of Roman Scotland, there would appear to be a very definite scheme of plotting out.

An earthenware vessel contained a hoard of coins which had been wrapped in textile. A total of 244 coins comprised Scottish gold and silver with some of English silver.

The Auchnacree hoard of bronze objects consisted of two flat axes, the cutting half of another, two knives and an armlet. At Quoykea two bronze implements, a socketed knife and a razor were recovered. Two flat bronze axes were found in Nairnshire. The Duddingston hoard discovered in 1778 was described as follows: A quantity of Roman arms consisting of 23 pieces of the heads of the hasta and jaculum; 20 pieces of the blades, and nine of the handles of the gladius and pugio; a ring three inches in diameter, fastened to the end of a staple; and a mass of different pieces of these arms, run together by fire, all of brass; sculls and other human bones, together with the horns of animals of the deer and elk species, dragged out of the middle of a bed of shell marie at the bottom of his loch of Duddingston." Many of the items are now lost and the remaining objects comprise the ring of a cauldron, thirty-two fragments of swords, the point of a rapier blade, the larger part of a small dagger or knife and fragments of fourteen spear-heads.