M. Cartailhac, the very eminent French archaeologist, found not in Portugal, but in the Cevennes, “plaques of slate, sometimes pierced with a hole for suspension, usually smaller than those of the Casa da Moura, not ornamented, yet certainly analogous with these.” [102a] These are also analogous with “engraved plaques of schist found in prehistoric sites of the Rio Negro,” “some resembling, others identical with those shewn at Lisbon by Carlos Ribeiro.” But the Rio Negro objects appear doubtful. [102b]
Portugal has many such plaques, some adorned with designs, and some plain. [102c] The late Don Estacio da Veiga devotes a chapter to them, as
if they were things peculiar to Portugal, in Europe. [103a] When they are decorated the ornament is usually linear; in two cases [103b] lines incised lead to “cups.” One plaque is certainly meant to represent the human form. M. Cartailhac holds that all the plaques with a “vandyked” pattern in triangles, without faces, “are, none the less, des représentations stylisées de silhouette humaine.” [103c]
Illustrations give an idea of them (figs. 14, 15, 16); they are more elaborate than the perforated inscribed plaques of shale or schist from Dumbuck. Two perforated stone plaques from Volósova, figured by Dr. Munro (pp. 78, 79), fall into line with other inscribed plaques from Portugal. Of these Russian objects referred to by Dr. Munro, one is (his fig. 25) a roughly pear-shaped thing in flint, perforated at the thin end; the other is a formless stone plaque, inscribed with a cross, three circles, not concentric, and other now meaningless scratches. It is not perforated. Dr. Munro does not dispute the genuine character of many strange figurines in flint, from Volósova, though the redoubtable M. de Mortillet denounced them as forgeries; they had the misfortune to corroborate
other Italian finds against which M. de Mortillet had a grudge. But Dr. Munro thinks that the two plaques of Volósova may have been made for sale by knavish boys. In that case the boys fortuitously coincided, in their fake, with similar plaques, of undoubted antiquity, and, in some prehistoric Egyptian stones, occasionally inscribed with mere wayward scratches.
For these reasons I think the Volósova plaques as genuine as any other objects from that site, and corroborative, so far, of similar things from Clyde.
To return to Portugal, M. Cartailhac recognises that the plain plaques of slate from sites in the Cevennes “are certainly analogous” with the plaques from the Casa da Moura, even when these are elaborately ornamented with vandyked and other patterns. I find one published case of a Portuguese plaque with cups and ducts, as at Dumbuck (fig. 16). Another example is in Antiguedades Prehistoricas de Andalucia, p. 109. [104] However, Dr. Munro leaves the Cevennes Andalusian, and Portuguese plaques out of his argument.
M. Cartailhac, then, found inscribed and perforated slate tablets “very common in Portugues neolithic sepulchres.” The perforated holes
showed signs of long wear from attachment to something or somebody. One, from New Jersey, with two holes, exactly as in the Dunbuie example, was much akin in ornament to the Portuguese plaques. One, of slate, was plain, as plain as “a bit of gas coal with a round hole bored through it,” recorded by Dr. Munro from Ashgrove Loch crannog. A perforated shale, or slate, or schist or gas coal plaque, as at Ashgrove Loch, ornamented or plain, is certainly like another shale schist or slate plaque, plain or inscribed. We have shown that these occur in France, Portugal, Russia, America, and Scotland, not to speak of Central Australia.