Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 74

Two cists were found side by side at Achinchanter whilst ploughing. The crouched skeleton in the first cist was very badly decomposed and only fragments of skull and long bone survived. The second cist contained a human jaw bone, a flint barbed and tanged arrowhead, a Food Vessel and a fragment of bronze. A sculptured stone from Embo Street formed part of a cist. The symbol suggests the form of a much shortened spade with a greatly exaggerated handle. There is a single cup on the underside of the stone. Two cup-marked boulders at Duible are described along with a group of three tumuli and a carved stone ball from Golspie. A cist in a mound at Ascoilemore contained only an urn.

A fortification on the Black Hill is re-interpreted as a Roman signal tower on the basis of further excavation. The tower is placed in a curious position. It does not, as might be expected, face Inchtuthil, three miles away. Its immediate objective is two isolated gaps or passages in a large linear earthwork, which runs across the plain some 500 yards away at the nearest point. The earthwork is known as the Cleaven Dyke. This was partly excavated and interpreted as a Roman limes or border defence.

The paper presents a classification and a tentative chronology, and a review of the comparative material along with a consideration of the relvance of Pictish and Irish art. Although the whole collection of early sculptured stones in Scotland forms a very varied series, there is a main group of Christian monuments of a distinctive type of which there are more £han a hundred still in existence. These are distributed over an area extending northwards from the River Forth as far as the Shetland Islands, and westwards to the Hebrides, the majority, however, being on the east coast. The uniformly Celtic character of their decoration makes it clear that in origin they go back to the period of the Celtic Church, and that they form part of the great group of early Christian monuments which extend over Ireland, the Isle of Man, Wales, and parts of England, as well as Scotland. But, although belonging to this series, the Scottish 1 sculptures show a definite originality. A distribution map and many plates are included. \r\n

The damaged short cist contained only the remains of a human skeleton.

A fragment of polychrome glass came from the excavation of an earth house at Tealing in 1871. The fragment is part of the side of one of the ribbed, low, circular bowls\r\nof Roman date familiarly, though inaccurately, described by the nineteenth-century\r\nname of "pillar-moulded bowls." It is an example of the type made from polychrome murrine glass and worked into an irregular streaky pattern, probably manufactured in Italy.

Following the discovery of three rim sherds, a shoulder sherd of a cinerary urn, several fragments of charred wood and a few tiny pieces of broken burnt bone a formal investigation was carried out and a clay filled pit was excavated. One of the layers in the pit consisted of red ashes, surrounded by a margin of unconsumed oak charcoal and fine black earth, with a few very small fragments of burnt bone. This feature has been interpreted as a pyre site. Beaker sherds were located in the vicinity. A nearby shaft was probably used as a medieval kitchen refuse dump for Borland Castle.

The brooch fragment was found within a deposit of red ashes, bone and shell. The upper surface of the ornament is partially gilt, and in the centre of the hoop is an oval sunk panel in which there had probably been an amber setting. Between the central portion and the terminal the hoop is traversed longitudinally by a moulding, in relief, running parallel to its flanged edges. The terminal is lozenge-shaped, with raised margins, and at the junction of the terminal with the hoop the edge expands so as to form a small hood. In the centre of the terminal is an amber setting, placed, in relief, within a circle divided into four segments by lines radiating from the setting to each corner of the terminal.

A few loose bones led to the recognition of a cist which protruded at the edge of a knoll of terrace gravel above the floodplain, of the Tweed. The skeletal remains were very fragmentary but are probably those of a well-developed male of above 40 or 45 years of age.