Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 76

It is now generally recognised that mural painting was a form of art extensively practised in medieval Britain. Broadly speaking, its use in churches, both as a medium for instruction and as a decoration, went out with the Reformation; but it continued to be employed in secular buildings until superseded by other types of wall-covering such as tapestry, panelling, and finally wall-paper. There are very few surviving examples in Scotland. The mural at Traquair House is in a room which can be assigned to the second half of the sixteenth century, and its superstructure was remodelled in the seventeenth century. The surviving elements of the mural are described in detail. The oak door in the same room as the mural was carved by the person who created the Amisfield Door which dates from 1600 and bears a representation of Samson in contemporary costume slaying the lion.

The urn was discovered during ploughing. There was no trace of a cist or a cairn. The grave-goods consisted of a battle-axe, a bronze knife or razor, an ornamented bone bead, and three shaped stones. Two or three worked flints were discovered at the first excavation of the site, but there is no certainty that they had actually been in the urn.

Terpersie Castle appears to be the earliest dated example of the characteristic Scottish "three-stepped" or Z-type of castle, which is specially common in the regions north of the Mounth. The ruins are described and illustrated. The ruins of Towie Castle are also briefly considered.

The oven was fully exposed and recorded in 1941. Analysis of the clay indicated that it had not been subjected to a very high temperature, comparable, for example, with that required for smelting iron or firing bricks. The oven could only have been used for baking. A piece of slag-like material found in a layer of burned clay inside the oven was identified as furnace-clinker formed by the burning of coal indicative of a fairly high temperature though not so high as in a smelting furnace. This does not prove that coal was used at Mumrills; all the evidence points to the use of wood as fuel. In its general plan and in the way in which it was worked, the Mumrills\r\noven resembled the circular baking-ovens commonly used in Roman forts.

The first cist contained the skeleton of a man aged upwards of forty years. He had osteoarthritis and had suffered a deep wound on the left side of the forehead some time before death, which had involved the bone and left a suppurating sore. Death had been caused by a deep wound on the front of the left thigh, inflicted by a sharp, heavy weapon which had cut deeply into the femur and had soon proved fatal. The second cist also contained a male skeleton aged upwards of forty five years with a lot of dental disease.