stirling-1963-vol-1/05_052

Transcription

PART II. THE MONUMENTS
As more than half the total area of Stirlingshire is occupied by the inhospitable hilly
regions described in Part I, I, above, human habitation has been confined, from the
earliest times, to the intervening valleys or to the small plain that borders the right
bank of the lower reaches of the River Forth. Consequently, it is only in and around these
restricted areas that the monuments are to be found.
Many of the early monuments included in this Inventory are either recorded here for the
first time or have been re-discovered from obscure or forgotten sources. For example, of the
twelve hill-forts the remains of which are substantial enough to be worth planning, only three
were marked on the O.S. maps. Of the remaining nine, however, as many as six have at one
time or another been mentioned in various works but have subsequently been lost to view.
It has, in addition, been possible to re-classify several recorded monuments in the light of
recent research. Many of the new discoveries, such as the fort on Dunmore (No. 77), have been
due to the examination of air-photographs of the National Survey; while some crop-sites,
both native (e.g. No. 106) and Roman (e.g. Nos. 119-121), have been located and photographed
from the air by Dr. J. K. S. St. Joseph, Curator in Aerial Photography, University of
Cambridge.

1. THE MESOLITHIC PERIOD
The Mesolithic relics occurring in the northern part of Britain ¹ include a number from the
county of Stirling. They were found, in every case by chance, at various depths in the clay
in the valley of the River Forth. In this area pollen analysis and stratigraphical investigations
have shown that the lowest layers consist of a bedrock of sandstone covered by boulder clay,
on which a layer of Late Glacial marine beds deposited by an early incursion of the sea and,
above this, a layer of Boreal peat. In the lower part of the valley, as far up as a point somewhere
between the Blairdrummond and Flanders Mosses, the Boreal peat is in turn overlaid by
Atlantic clay, which provides an indication of the extent of the main local advance of the
marine transgression of the Atlantic period that led to the formation of the Late Post-Glacial
Sea. ² It was in the vicinity of the raised beach of this sea, or on its bed, that the Mesolithic
relics, together with others possibly attributable to the same period, were found. They can be
classed as follows:
(a) Implements of red-deer antler and of bone, which have been identified as blubber
mattocks, together with worked branches of antlers, have been discovered in close association
with bones of whales which, with other skeletal remains, have been found in the clay in several
places in the neighbourhood of Stirling.³ No precise date can be assigned to the antler

1 See, for example, P.P.S., new series xxi (1955), 13.
2 Lacaille, The Stone Age in Scotland (1954), 53 ff.; Proceedings of the Geological Association, xxxviii (1927), 486 ff.; The Scottish
Geographical Magazine, lxxiv, No. I (1958), 47.
3 P.R.I.A., lvi (1953-4), Section C, 90.

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