As to the Russo-Finnish flint figurines, Mr. Abercromby thinks that these objects may “have served as household gods or personal amulets,” and Dr. Munro regards Mr. Abercromby’s as “the most rational explanation of their meaning and purpose.” He speaks of figurines of clay (the most usual material) in Carniola, Bosnia, and Transylvania. “Idols and amulets were indeed universally used in prehistoric times.” [121c] “Objects which come under the same category” occur “in various parts of America.” Mr. Bruce [121d] refers to M. Reinach’s vast collection of designs of such figurines in L’Anthropologie, vol. v., 1894. Thus rude figurines in sites of many stages are very familiar objects. The forger knew it, and
dumped down a few at Dumbuck. His female figurine (photographed in fig. 19), seems to me a very “plausible” figurine in itself. It does not appear to me “unlike anything in any collection in the British Isles, or elsewhere”—I mean elsewhere. Dr. Munro admits that it discloses “the hand of one not altogether ignorant of art.” [122] I add that it discloses the hand of one not at all ignorant of genuine prehistoric figurines representing women.
But I know nothing analogous from British sites. Either such things do not exist (of which we cannot be certain), or they have escaped discovery and record. Elsewhere they are, confessedly, well known to science, and therefore to the learned forger who, nobody can guess why, dumped them down with the other fraudulent results of his researches.
If the figurines be genuine, I suppose that the Clyde folk made them for the same reasons as the other peoples who did so, whatever those reasons may have been: or, like the West Africans, found them, relics of a forgotten age, and treasured them. If their reasons were religious or superstitious, how am I to know what were the theological tenets of the Clyde
residents? They may have been more or less got at by Christianity, in Saint Ninian’s time, but the influence might well be slight. On the other hand, neither men nor angels can explain why the forger faked his figurines, for which he certainly had a model—at least as regards the female figure—in a widely distributed archaic feminine type of “dolly.” The forger knew a good deal!
Dr. Munro writes: “That the disputed objects are amusing playthings—the sportive productions of idle wags who inhabited the various sites—seems to be the most recent opinion which finds acceptance among local antiquaries. But this view involves the contemporaneity of occupancy of the respective sites, of which there is no evidence. . . .” [123a]
There is no evidence for “contemporaneity of occupancy” if Dunbuie be of 300-900 a.d., and Dumbuck and Langbank of 1556-1758. [123b] But we, and apparently Dr. Munro (p. 264) have rejected the “Corporation cairn” theory, the theory of the cairn erected in 1556, or 1612, and lasting till 1758. The genuine undisputed relics, according to Dr. Munro, are such as “are commonly found on crannogs,
brochs, and other early inhabited sites of Scotland.” [124a] The sites are all, and the genuine relics in the sites are all “of some time between the fifth and twelfth centuries.” [124b] The sites are all close to each other, the remains are all of the same period, (unless the late Celtic comb chance to be earlier,) yet Dr. Munro says that “for contemporaneity of occupancy there is no evidence.” [124c] He none the less repeats the assertion that they are of “precisely the same chronological horizon.” “The chronological horizon” (of Langbank and Dumbuck) “seems to me to be precisely the same, viz. a date well on in the early Iron Age, posterior to the Roman occupation of that part of Britain” (p. 147).
Thus Dr. Munro assigns to both sites “precisely the same chronological horizon,” and also says that “there is no evidence” for the “contemporaneity of occupancy.” This is not, as it may appear, an example of lack of logical consistency. “The range of the occupancy” (of the sites) “is uncertain, probably it was different in each case,” writes Dr. Munro. [124d] No reason is given for this opinion, and as all the undisputed remains are confessedly of one stage of culture, the “wags” at all three sites were
probably in the same stage of rudimentary humour and skill. If they made the things, the things are not modern forgeries. But the absence of the disputed objects from other sites of the same period remains as great a difficulty as ever. Early “wags” may have made them—but why are they only known in the three Clyde sites? Also, why are the painted pebbles only known in a few brochs of Caithness?