The archæology and prehistoric annals of Scotland

by Sir Daniel Wilson

"At a short distance, nearer the entrance, were found, in a continuation of the same mould, articles of bone of three sorts; some of an inch long, and pointed at one end, or arrow-heads; others about three inches long, rounded, slender, and likewise pointed. Conjecture was long busy as to their destination—they were thought by some to be bodkins, by others for confining the hair, like those ornaments used by the women in Italy; lastly, they were supposed, with more probability, to be a species of pin for fastening the skin in front which served savages for garments. The third article does not seem so easy to explain; it is of a different shape, quite flat, broad at one end, pointed at the other, the broad part retains the truncated form of a comb, the teeth of which were broken off near their root; whether it was used as a comb, or for making nets for fishing, is not clear. There was only this solitary one found, and two of the former, but several of the first, with a quantity of bone chips. All three bore marks of polish.

"Nearer the mouth are collected a good number of shells of the muscle, limpet, and oyster, with a palate of the scarus. This, as well as the nacker of oysters which was thickly disseminated through the mould, served, as they do at the present day among savages, most probably for ornament. The shell-fish may have furnished bait for fishing. The presence of these rude articles render it probable that they were collected here by the ancient aborigines, who divided their time between the chase and fishing in the adjacent sea.

"Close to the opposite wall, in the same passage, buried in black mould, I found a stone hatchet, or celt, of sienite, the only one found in the cavern. Another of the same material, but of a different shape, I found shortly after not far from the cavern near Anstis Cove, which labourers engaged in making the new cut had just thrown up with the mould.

"As we advanced towards the second mouth, on the same level, were found, though sparingly, pieces of pottery. The most remarkable product of this gallery were round pieces of blue slate, about an inch and a-half in diameter and a quarter thick. They may have served, like the Kimmeridge coal, for money. In the same quarter were likewise found several round pieces of sandstone grit, about the form and size of a dollar, but thicker and rounded at the edge, and in the centre pierced with a hole, by means of which they seem to have been strung together like beads. Clusters of small pipes or icicles of spar, such as depended from the roof at our first visit, we saw collected here in heaps, buried in the mud. Similar collections we had occasion to observe accompanied by charcoal, throughout the entire range of the cavern, sometimes in pits excavated in the stalagmite. Copper ore—with these various articles in the same stuff was picked up—a lump much oxydized, which the late Mr. Phillips analyzed, was found to be pure virgin ore.

"Having taken a general survey of the surface of the floor, we returned to the point from which we set out, viz., the common passage, for the purpose of piercing into the materials below the mould. Here in sinking a foot into the soil, (for of stalagmite there remained only the broken edges adhering to the sides of the passage, and which appeared to be repeated at intervals,) we came upon flints in all forms, confusedly disseminated through the earth, and intermixed with fossil and human bones, the whole slightly agglutinated together by calcareous matter derived from the roof. My collection possesses an example of this aggregation in a mass consisting of pebbles, clay, and bone, in the midst of which is imbedded a fine blade of flint, all united together by sparry cement.

"The flints were in all conditions; from the rounded pebble as it came out of the chalk, to the instruments fabricated from them, as arrow and spear-heads, and hatchets. Some of the flint blocks were chipped only on one side, such as had probably furnished the axes, others on several faces, presenting planes corresponding exactly to the long blades found by their side, and from which they had been evidently sliced off; other pebbles still more angular and chipped at all points, were no doubt those which yielded the small arrow-heads. These abounded in by far the greatest number. Small irregular splinters, not referrible to any of the above divisions, and which seem to have been struck off in the operation of detaching the latter, not unlike the small chips in a sculptor's shop, were thickly scattered through the stuff, indicating that this spot was the workshop where the savage prepared his weapons of the chase, taking advantage of its cover and the light.

"I have discovered in this passage precisely similar arrow-heads to those which I detected in an urn from a barrow presented to me by the Rev. Mr. Welland.

"With the exception of the Boar spear [of iron] and a blade of the same metal found not far from it, very much rusted, all the articles in the mould or in the disturbed soil consisted of flint, chert, sienite, and bone—such primitive substances as have been in all countries and down to the present, used by the savage for the fabrication of his weapons, whether for the chase or battle.

"At a still greater depth, near the common entrance in the passage, lay extended lengthwise in the ordinary position of burial, the remains of a human skeleton much decayed; two portions only of the jaw and some single teeth, with the mouldering vertebræ and ribs, were all that remained. As in the case of the flint knife mass, already described, there adhered to the jaw portions of the soil on which it lay, and of the stalagmite which partly covered it.

"The teeth were so worn down that the flat crowns of the incisors might be mistaken for molars,[221] indicating the advanced age of the individual. M. Cuvier, to whom I submitted the fragment in 1831, was struck with the form of the jaw. He pronounced it to belong to the Caucasian race. He promised to bestow particular notice on it, but death, unhappily for science, put a stop to his labours. All the specimens, together with a collection of fossil bones, the third I had presented to the museum of the Jardin des Plantes, I transmitted to him before I quitted the continent, and they may be found among his effects. The skeleton lay about a foot and a half below the surface; from the tumbled state of the earth, the admixture of flags of stalagmite, added to the presence of flint articles and pieces of slate, it was manifest that the floor had been dug up for the reception of the body, and that it was again covered over with the materials thrown up from the excavation. The earthy covering consisted of the red soil, containing fossil bones mixed up with recent mould, the mound of earth outside the mouth, at the right hand, was thrown up from the passage to render it more accessible. It was precisely that which covered the human skeleton, and contained the admixture of human and fossil relics.