caithness-1911/05_022

Transcription

INVENTORY OF MONUMENTS, ETC., IN COUNTY OF CAITHNESS -- xxi

the deposit covering the floors of the cairns and unburnt remains
above. Tools and weapons of stone or flint were deposited with the
remains; and round-bottomed vessels of hand-made pottery, semi-
globular in form, close in texture and smooth on the surface,
occasionally ornamented with impressions of a finger nail, as a rule
accompanied the interments.
The numerous bones of animals found in chambered cairns show
that our neolithic ancestors had domestic animals of much the same
species as our own, though differing, no doubt, greatly in appearance,
viz., sheep or goats and oxen. They kept dogs for the chase, and
they trapped or hunted the red-deer. That these cairns are the
tombs, not of the ordinary population, but of rulers and warriors
renowned in their day, is a natural supposition, and the magnitude
of such monuments is a measure of the esteem, if not of the affection,
in which their occupants were held. The people who could erect
these tombs had a power of combination and a subjection to discipline
which distinguish them from mere savages; and the ability which
enabled them to overcome the engineering difficulties to be en-
countered in poising the massive lintels on the portal stones and
in building and roofing these chambers, was of no mean order. The
culture disclosed in these sepulchres is that of the neolithic period,
and the skulls found within them are those of a long-headed people
of medium height with clear-cut profiles and refined features. These
chambered-cairn builders, according to the general consensus of
opinion among anthropologists, belonged to a primitive stock which
inhabited the Mediterranean basin and spread northward in neolithic
times. Their general distribution in Europe is to be gathered from
that of the dolmens and megalithic chambers.
Such, then, are the earliest monuments of man still to be found
in the county. Of the same type, and differing only in their form
and size, are the round or short cairns with horns.
These disclose the same features of chamber, passage of access,
concave outline at either end formed by the projecting horns, and
structural walls on the external face of the cairn, but they differ in
their dimensions, the body of the cairn measuring from 40' to 60' in
diameter. The skeletal remains and relics recovered from such of
these cairns as have been excavated belong to the same race and
culture as those from the previous class. A small number are to be
found in Caithness, and also in the adjacent county of Sutherland,
but they do not appear to be represented among the barrows of
England, nor are they at present known elsewhere in Scotland.
Long cairns without a semi-circular concavity at either end,
judging from the results of excavation in the analogous long barrows
in England, likewise appear to belong to this period. It has, however,
yet to be ascertained by the scientific excavation of the few remaining
examples of these three varieties, whether any distinction is to be
observed among their racial and cultural remains.
Another form of cairn to be found in this county marks a later
development. Still chambered and entered by a passage, it is no
longer horned, and is either circular or elliptical in outline. In
Caithness, the culture disclosed in such cairns of this class as have
been excavated, is still neolithic in its general features, though in
certain instances the relics and pottery suggest a relation with the