argyll-1971/01-026

Transcription

EIGHTEENTH REPORT

of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical
Monuments of Scotland

TO THE QUEEN'S MOST EXCELLENT MAJESTY

MAY IT PLEASE YOUR MAJESTY, -
We, Your Majesty's Commissioners, appointed to make an Inventory of the Ancient and
Historical Monuments and Constructions connected with or illustrative of the contemporary
culture, civilisation and conditions of life of the people in Scotland from the earliest times to
the year 1707, and such further Monuments and Constructions of a date subsequent to that
year as may seem in our discretion worthy of mention therein, and to specify those which seem
most worthy of preservation, humbly present to Your Majesty the Report on the Ancient
Monuments of Kintyre, being the Eighteenth Report on the work of the Commission since
its first appointment.
2. We record with grateful respect the receipt of the gracious message that accompanied
Your Majesty's acceptance of the volume embodying our Seventeenth Report with Inventory
of the Ancient Monuments of Peeblesshire.
3. It is with great regret that we have to record the deaths of Mr. Ian Gordon Lindsay,
O.B.E., R.S.A., F,R.I.B.A., and of Mr. William Douglas Simpson, C.B.E., D.Litt., LL.D.,
F.S.A., both of whom gave unstinted service to the Commission for many years.
4. We have to thank Your Majesty for the appointment of Professor Patrick John Nuttgens,
Ph.D., A.R.I.B.A., under Your Majesty's Royal Sign Warrant of 21st February 1967, and of
Professor Archibald Alexander McBeth Duncan, under Your Majesty's Royal Sign Warrant of
23rd February 1969.
5. Following our usual practice we have prepared a detailed, illustrated Inventory of the
Ancient Monuments of Kintyre, being the first volume of the Inventory of the County of
Argyll, which will be issued as a non-Parliamentary publication.
6. Kintyre contains a rich and varied assemblage of prehistoric remains, many of which have
been discovered in the course of our survey, Of particular interest are the Neolithic burial
cairns of the 3rd millennium B.C., the remarkable concentration of cup-marked stones, and the
numerous small stone forts traditionally known as "duns". The duns constitute by far the
largest class of Iron Age structures in Argyll, and our survey marks a significant preliminary
step towards the study of some of the complex problems of the occupation of the Atlantic
Province of the British Iron Age.
7. The most important of the architectural monuments belong to the medieval period. They

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