the clay, which would produce a hole, or well-like cavity similar to that of the Dumbuck structure.” [44]
It is not stated that the poles of river cairns usually demand accommodation to the extent of six feet of diameter, in the centre of the solid mass of stones, and, as the Langbank site has no central well, the tentative conjecture that it was a river cairn is not put forward. Dr. Murray suggests that the Dumbuck cairn “may have been one of the works of 1556 or 1612,” that is, of the modern age of Queen Mary and James VI. The object of such Corporation cairns “was no doubt to mark the limit of their jurisdiction, and also to serve as a beacon to vessels coming up the river.”
Now the Corporation, with its jurisdiction and beacons, is purely modern. In 1758 the Corporation had a “lower cairn, if it did not occupy this very spot” (Dumbuck) “it stood upon the same line and close to it. There are, however, no remains of such cairn,” says Dr. Murray. He cites no evidence for the date and expenses of the demolition of the cairn from any municipal book of accounts.
Now we have to ask (1) Is there any evidence
that men in 1556-1758 lived on the tops of such modern cairns, dating from the reign of Mary Stuart? (2) If men then lived on the top of a cairn till their food refuse became “a veritable kitchen midden,” as Dr. Munro says, [45] would that refuse exhibit bones of Bos Longifrons; and over ninety bone implements, sharpened antlers of deer, stone polishers, hammer stones, “a saddle stone” for corn grinding, and the usual débris of sites of the fifth to the twelfth centuries? (3) Would such a modern site exhibit these archaic relics, plus a “Late Celtic” comb and “penannular brooch,” and exhibit not one modern article of metal, or one trace of old clay tobacco pipes, crockery, or glass?
The answers to these questions are obvious. It is not shown that any men ever lived on the tops of cairns, and, even if they did so in modern times (1556-1758) they could not leave abundant relics of the broch and crannog age (said to be of 400-1100 a.d.), and leave no relics of modern date. This theory, or suggestion, is therefore demonstrably untenable and unimaginable.
Dr. Munro, however, “sees nothing against the supposition” that “Dr. Murray is right,” but Dr. Munro’s remarks about the hypothesis
of modern cairns, as a theory “against which he sees nothing,” have the air of being an inadvertent obiter dictum. For, in his conclusion and summing up he writes, “We claim to have established that the structures of Dunbuie, Dumbuck, and Langbank are remains of inhabited sites of the early-Iron Age, dating to some time between the fifth and twelfth centuries.” [46a] I accept this conclusion, and will say as little as may be about the theory of a modern origin of the sites, finally discarded by Dr. Munro. I say “discarded,” for his theory is that the modern corporation utilised an earlier structure as a cairn or beacon, or boundary mark, which is perfectly possible. But, if this occurred, it does not affect the question, for this use of the structure has left no traces of any kind. There are no relics, except relics of the fifth (?) to twelfth (?) centuries.
In an earlier work by Dr. Munro, Prehistoric Scotland (p. 439), published in 1899, he observes that we have no evidence as to the when, or how of the removal of the stones of the hypothetical “Corporation cairn,” or “round tower with very thick walls,” [46b] or “watch tower,” which is supposed to have been erected above the wooden sub-structure
at Dumbuck. He tentatively suggests that the stones may have been used, perhaps, for the stone causeway now laid along the bank of the recently made canal, from a point close to the crannog to the railway. No record is cited. He now offers guesses as to the stones “in the so-called pavements and causeways.” First, the causeways may have probably been made “during the construction of the tower with its central pole,” (here the cairn is a habitable beacon, habitable on all hypotheses,) or, again, “perhaps at the time of its demolition” about which demolition we know nothing, [47a] except that the most of the stones are not now in situ.