Abstract
A NUMBER of bronze age burials with some remarkable and unusual features, recently disclosed by building operations at Doonfoot, Ayr, and at Kiccarton, Ferniegair, Lanarkshire, are described by Mr. Ludovic Mann in The Scotsman of July 20. At Doonfoot, no evidence of a cairn was discovered, but at Ferniegair, a structure of stone, of which the overground portion had been demolished, had covered a group of burials. Some eighty tons of loose stones, some water-rolled, formed an understructure in which horizontal layers of turf had filled the interstices and survived in the form of black carbonized matter. Both cemeteries have yielded pottery vessels of various types, assignable to successive phases of the bronze age and, therefore, pointing to an occupation covering a considerable period of time. The earliest form is a small squat hand-made food-vessel, with incised and impressed zonal ornament. Traces of carbonized cereal adhere to the interior. The bodies had been placed in the contracted position, looking toward the rising, or, in one instance, the setting sun, at Midsummer. Over one body at Ferniegair was sheeting made from the twisted and plaited stems of the Scottish moss, Polytrichum commune. Other examples of this textile material have been found at Mount Vernon, Glasgow, in a bronze age cairn near Stranraer, and a few weeks ago at Craignish, Argyll. Mr. Mann states that the dimensions of the stones of the tomb structures conform with an ancient linear measure, as do the interior dimensions of the chamber; and also that the position of the urn-fields, and other remains, ancient roads and tracks, conform, in a geometrical convention, also based on a common unit. Both at Doonfoot and Riccarton, adjoining burials contained large cinerary urns, with cremated remains, inverted over squared stone slabs. These overlie burials of the earlier inhumation period. At Doonfoot three burials were superimposed. A further find recorded is at Catacol, Lochranza, Arran, where a six-foot skeleton was found in the extended position in a long narrow chamber, constructed of small side slabs and heavy roofing stones. An iron object was found with the body.
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Bronze Age Burials in Scotland. Nature 138, 236 (1936). https://doi.org/10.1038/138236a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/138236a0