breadth. It measured 4 feet 6 inches by 2 feet 6 inches, and its longer axis lay north-east and south-west. Seven similarly thin slabs of clay-stone completed the Cist, which was 2 feet in depth, to the flooring slab; but the sides and ends were set to a depth of 6 inches below into the soil. The covering-slab, which I saw in fragments, was also of clay-stone, only 1 inch in thickness; and its upper surface was within 4 inches of This part of the cemetery, however, had been levelled some the grass. time ago. The seven slabs composing the Cist were arranged as shown in the plan (fig. 17), the ends of the Cist being strengthened by there being two slabs set close together. Notwithstanding this, the double-slabs at the south-west end were in part forced inwards and broken in pieces by the roots of the tree planted there. The complete length of the long side slab on the north-west, and of one of the two forming the south-east side was not obtainable, on account of the newly made grave there. The position of the Urn was pointed out to me by one of the workmen, and it is correctly recorded in the plan. It was covered by a thin piece of the same laminated clay-stone; but it was broken in the lifting. Otherwise, the Cist was described as being nearly filled with soil which had silted in.1 There are enough fragments of the Urn to show the following features: that it was a food-vessel of rather coarse reddish clay, probably 6 inches in height when complete, 5 inches wide across the mouth, and 3 across the base. The lip, which, as usual, slopes down inwards, is of an inch thick, and bears three irregularly horizontal lines of closely touched pressed marks. Lines of the same character cover the space 23 inches deep between the lip and the shoulder, the lower part being quite plain. The inner side of the Urn is patched with dark-brown spots. No. 7. Cist and Urn at Cowdenhill, Grangepans, near Bo'ness, 1 These notes were made with the help of Mr Alan Reid, F.S.A. Scot., and Mr J. E. Simpkins, Second Attendant in the Museum. Linlithgowshire.-This discovery was made on the 28th September 1905. In the course of correspondence with Mr H. M. Cadell of Grange, I received photographs of the Cist and Urn, and a few notes upon the discovery, which are to the following effect :--the site was a sand-bed of the 25-foot beach, about 10 feet above high-tide level; and, says Mr Cadell, "after careful examination, it is clear that the sea did not reach the coffin." The bones were mostly fragmentary, and there was nothing. but the Urn, besides the soil that filled the interior. The Cist (fig. 18) was 40 inches long inside, about 21 inches wide, and 18 inches deep, covered by a heavy slab of freestone with no tool-marks on it. The sides and ends of the Cist were also of freestone slabs. The Cist lay with its long axis E. 30' N. Mr Cadell compares this Cist with its Urn to another containing a similar Urn found on the Grange estate in 1896, and in the keeping of Sir William Turner, at the Anatomical Museum. The Urn (fig. 19) is of the food-vessel variety, standing 5 inches in height and measuring across the mouth 63 inches, and is richly ornamented in the usual style. III. NOTICES OF CUP- AND RING-MARKS. No. 1. Avochie, Rothiemay.-The site of the cup- and ring-marked boulder here is on the north slope of the Hill of Avochie, at a point. 586 yards S.W. of the site of a Stone Circle on Kimmonity, and slightly over a quarter of a mile N.N.E. of Midplough. It was alluded to in my last account of the cup-marked Recumbent Stone in the Circle on Rothiemay home-farm. This whinstone boulder measures 11 feet by 9 feet; at its nothern extremity it is 2 feet 5 inches above the ground, and at the southern 2 feet and an inch. The highest portion of the Stone is at a point near C on the plan (fig. 20), marked by an eight-rayed star; and from this point the surface, which is here and there broken by shallow fissures and groove-like marks entirely due to natural causes, slopes off at varying angles. This I have endeavoured to show in a conventional manner by placing arrows to indicate the slope: the shorter the arrow the steeper the slope. The portion above A is fairly flat and smooth; near D is a broadish flat edge also, and at some time or other the lowest part on the left seems to have been broken; whether it bore sculpturings or not, no one knows. The surface appears to have sustained a considerable amount of weathering, as Mr Geddes informs me most of the markings are not very distinct. The clearest are the ringed cups below D on the plan. The total number of cups is eighty-three, of which five are distinctly oval in contour. They are arranged in four groups: A, in the north-west corner, containing twenty-seven simple circular cups and two oval cups, eight circular cups with rings, and one ringed oval; at B are two simple cups; at C, twenty-seven simple circular cups and two oval, also two circular ringed cups; at group D there are four simple circular cups and one oval cup, five very finely ringed circular cups, and one smallish oval Nowhere on the Stone is there a sign of any straight groove with its ring. 1 Proceedings, vol. xxxvii. p. 228. For all the facts recorded in the present notice of this Stone I am much indebted to Mr J. Geddes, of the Schoolhouse, Rothiemay. |