There is in the Museum another urn of this material (Fig. [55]) also from the island of Rousay, but unfortunately there is no record of the circumstances of its discovery. It is of steatite, oval in shape, the sides bulging from the bottom upwards. It measures 11 inches by 10 across the mouth, and stands 7½ inches high. It is rudely ornamented by incised lines cut round the outside immediately under the rim, and is still about one-third full of calcined human bones.
Fig 56.—Urn of Steatite found in Shapinsay, Orkney (4 inches high).
An urn of the same character (Fig. [56]) was recently found in making a road through a sand hill about a mile north-east of Balfour Castle, in Shapinsay, Orkney. It was enclosed in a cist in a small tumulus, the cist being composed of four slabs for the sides and ends, and a slab for the bottom, with another flat stone for a cover. When found the urn was in fragments, but the fragments had been united by some kind of string, the fibrous texture of which was discernible in the holes which had been bored on either side of the fractures, and through which the cord had been passed to repair the breaks.
Fig. 57.—Urn of Steatite, found in Fair Isle (4 inches high).
In 1874 a small burial mound, about 8 feet in diameter and 2½ feet high, was removed in the course of the construction of a road between the North and South Havens in Fair Isle, lying midway between Orkney and Shetland. In the mound there was found a large, oval-shaped, rudely-formed, and unornamented urn of baked clay. Although imperfect it measures upwards of 12 inches in height. Beside it there was a smaller urn of steatite (Fig. [57]), also oval in shape, but
Fig. 57.—Urn of Steatite, found in Fair Isle (4 inches high). much more neatly formed. It measures 5½ inches in its longer diameter, and almost 5 inches in its shorter diameter across the mouth, and stands 4 inches high. Under the rim is a bevelled band, giving it something of an ornamental character. Close by this mound, in a flat space, there were found at intervals a number of flat stones, from 6 to 12 inches under the surface, and below each stone there was observed what is described as “a carefully-rounded hole, about 6 inches deep by 10 inches broad, very smooth in the inside, and lined with about an inch thick of a soft, black, adhesive substance, resembling a mixture of peat-moss and clay, and containing in the bottom a whitish substance resembling bone ash.” These phenomena thus imperfectly observed indicate in all probability a small cemetery of urns set in the ground, with stone covers, and having no mounds heaped over them.
In 1821 a mound in the island of Uyea, in Shetland, yielded a group of six interments, each consisting of an urn of this character filled with burnt human bones and ashes. Hibbert describes one of the urns as a well-shaped vessel, constructed of a soft magnesian stone, having the bottom made of a separate piece, and fitted into its place by a groove.[[45]]