argyll-1971/01-047

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PART II. THE MONUMENTS

I. THE MESOLITHIC PERIOD (c. 4000-3000 B.C.)
The earliest inhabitants of Kintyre were small groups of hunters and fishermen, evidence
of whose presence in the peninsula is confined to discoveries of their distinctive worked flints.
All the flints in question have come from the vicinity of Campbeltown,1 the principal deposits
being those at Dalaruan (c. 717211),2 Millknowe (c. 715211)3 and the Albyn Distillery
(715209).4 The flints mainly occurred in a well-defined level immediately above the so-called
25 ft. raised beach, 5 and at Dalaruan they underlay a Bronze Age Cinerary Urn burial (No.
62, 4). The most reliable record of the stratigraphy was made at the Albyn Distillery site, where over one thousand implements of flint and quartz were recovered. Only a few of these were water-worn, and the material seems to represent a foreshore occupation, either at the period of maximum transgression of the Post-Glacial sea or at the beginning of its withdrawal to the present shore-line. The majority of the flints are waste flakes, but side-and end-scrapers and a quartz chisel-ended tool were also found. The other sites which have produced flint implements attributable to this period are the Calton Housing Scheme (c. 7121)6 and the Springbank Distillery, Glebe Street (716205),7 both in Campbeltown, and Langa Links, Machrihanish Bay.8

The cultural affinities of the Campbeltown flint industry are still a matter for discussion, but the Irish Larnian material is not now considered to be as closely related to the Kintyre artefacts as was previously thought.9 The flints from the Albyn Distillery site have been compared to material from the Solway area, and the industries of both regions are at present termed the South-west Scottish Coastal Mesolithic.10 The age of the Campbeltown deposits have also been under consideration recently, and it has been suggested11 that, by analogy with other sites in South-west Scotland, they date to about the end of the fifth millennium B.C. It is probable, therefore, that the Mesolithic communities were still occupying the foreshore at the head of Campbeltown loch at much the same time as the arrival of the earliest Neolithic people in the peninsula.


2. THE NEOLITHIC PERIOD (c.3000-2000 B.C.)

The end of the fourth millennium B.C. witnessed the arrival in South-west Scotland of fresh immigrants who brought with them a new form of subsistence economy based upon mixed farming. These settlers reached Kintyre by sea, some of them probably arriving by way of

1 cf McCallien, W. T. and Lacaille, A.D., "The Campbeltown Raised Beach and its contained Stone Industry", PSAS, 1xxv (1940-1), 55ff.
2 Ibid., xxviii (1893-4), 263ff.
3 Lacaille, A.D., The Stone Age in Scotland (1954), 142.
4 PSAS, 1xxv (1940-1), 59ff.
5 The heights of such raised shore-lines vary from place to place. For a discussion of the problems involved, cf. Sissons, J.B., The Evolution of Scotland's Scenery (1967), 166ff.
6 The Campbeltown Courier 6th May, 1946; Lacaille, A.D. The Stone Age in Scotland (1954), 149.
7 DES (1956), 3.
8 Lacaille, op. cit., 288ff.
9 Ibid., 140ff.
10. TDGAS, x1i 1962-3), 72ff., 92f.
11 Ibid., x1v (1968), 53. or this period in SW Scotland only one radiocarbon date is as yet available; it is 4050B.C. #150 (GaK-1601) for a coastal site at Barsalloch, Wigtownshire.

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