dumfries-1920/04-051

Transcription

INVENTORY OF MONUMENTS IN DUMFRIESSHIRE.

Small Cairns and Hut Circles. - The recent discovery of the remains of Bronze
Age vessels, seemingly of domestic type, in the centre of two hut circles in Ayr-
shire, ¹ is irrefutable evidence that such sites were occupied during that period.
But it does not follow that such inhabitation was confined to that period, and there
can be little doubt that, if none of our hut circles has a Stone Age origin, some of
them certainly are the foundations of dwellings of the Iron Age. The association
of small cairns, beyond placing the remains in pre-Christian times, does not actually
help us, for Iron Age sepulture occasionally took place in cairns; but as more relics
of the Bronze Age have been recovered from such erections, there is at least a
presumption that the hut circles with associated small cairns belong to the latter
epoch. There have been located in the county some thirty-one groups either of
small cairns, such as are usually found in association with hut circles, by themselves,
or of small cairns with the accompanying hut circles; and the fact that there is
not a single one of these groups in Eskdale or Ewesdale supports the inference which
the distribution of the larger cairns leads up to, that in early prehistoric times the
eastern districts of the county were very sparsely peopled. The groups lie in ten
parishes: Closeburn, Dunscore, Glencairn, Keir, Kirkmahoe, Kirkpatrick-Juxta,
Kirkmichael, Middlebie, Sanquhar, and Tynron. Eight of these parishes are in
Nithsdale. Kirkpatrick-Juxta and Kirkmichael are in Annandale, but the groups
in the former parish lie all on the west side of the Annan, and are on the moorland
reaching back to Queensberry Hill, a region, as shown above, in which early
cairns also occur in considerable numbers, while the two groups in Kirkmichael
Parish lie on the high ground between the two dales, and are only a few miles distant
from a group near Glenmaid in the Nithsdale parish of Kirkmahoe.
There is another point to observe about these groups for which a satisfactory
explanation has yet to be discovered, and that is the remarkable uniformity of
elevation at which they are found. In the Inventory the approximate height
above sea-level is given of twenty-nine out of the thirty-one groups, and an analysis of
these statements yields the following results. No less than twenty-three of the groups
lie at an altitude of between 800 and 900 feet, four between 700 and 800 feet, and only
two below the 700-feet elevation. Many groups formerly existing at lower levels
have doubtless been eliminated by the action of the plough, but, if the extension of
agriculture in comparatively recent times afforded an explanation, we should expect
to find those constructions which still remain situated at the edge of the moorland,
which is by no means the case. This may be noticed particularly with regard to the
small cairns at Knockespen in Kirkmichael Parish, from the position of which, high up
on a long ridge, there stretches below a wide reach of moorland which has never been
broken in to the plough. The best-preserved examples of hut circles are those on
Whitestanes Moor, Kirkmahoe Parish. They seem for the most part to be oval, and
present features which did not occur in the hut circles of Galloway or of the northern
counties, in that they have been dug out to such an extent that the present floor-
level in the interior is sunk in one case as much as 1 1/2 to 2 feet below the natural surface
on the outside. Similar pit dwellings were met with in Lauderdale, but not in
association with small cairns. ²
Rock Sculptures. - The limitation eastwards of rock sculptures in the
Stewartry was remarked on in the Inventory of that county, and it is not surprising
therefore, as all the evidence points to the populating of Galloway and western

1 Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot., xlviii. p. 376.
2 Berwickshire Inventory, p. 122, No. 231.

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