[407] Report of ... the Brit. Association, 1888 (1889), pp. 289-316. In regard to the chambered round barrows of Derbyshire, see also Journ. Brit. Archaeol. Association, N. S., vi, 1900, p. 7, and cf. W. Greenwell, Brit. Barrows, pp. 447-52.
[408] Archaeologia, xlix, 1885, pp. 189-92, 194-7; W. C. Borlase, Dolmens of Ireland, i, 145, 149, ii, 418, 441-2, 445-6, 448, 451, 462. See also Borlase’s Nenia Cornubiae, 1872, p. 3, and Vict. Hist. of ... Cornwall, i, 358.
[409] Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot., xxxvi, 1902, pp. 74-181: xxxvii, 1903, pp. 36-67; xxxviii, 1904, pp. 17-81; Journ. Anthr. Inst., xxxii, 1902, pp. 398-406. These cairns have no passages of entrance. Their outline was commonly rectangular, the ground-plan being defined by flagstones, arranged at one end in a semi-circle, the space within which led to a low portal that gave access to the chamber. The latter consisted of two sections, one above the other, of which the lower was built of large lateral slabs, covered by flagstones, and divided by other slabs into compartments, while the upper was formed of small flags laid horizontally.
A chambered cairn of abnormal form in the island of Ronsay, Orkney, which has been described by Sir William Turner (Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot., xxxvii, 1903, pp. 73-82), ‘consisted of a central part and four recesses’ (ib., pp. 74-5, fig. 1); and on its roof were cremation cists ‘quite different in character from the short cists so frequently found in Scotland’ (ib., p. 79).
[410] Journ. Anthr. Inst., xxxii, 1902, pp. 398, 405; Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot., xxxviii, 1904, p. 78.
[411] Ib., xxxvi, 1902, pp. 154-5. The chronology of the peculiar chambered cairns of South-Western Scotland is somewhat perplexing. On the one hand the structure of the cairns is presumptive evidence that they were built in neolithic times (J. Anderson, Scotland in Pagan Times,—the Bronze and Stone Ages, pp. 271-2; Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot., xxxvi, 1902, p. 136); the successive interments which were made in them were characteristic of the same period (ib., p. 134); the pottery which they contained is almost all of neolithic type (ib., pp. 165-7; xxxviii, 1904, pp. 78-9); and the presence of drinking-cups does not necessarily point to a later date (p. 193, infra). On the other hand a perforated stone hammer, which was found in one of the chambers (ib., xxxvi, 1902, p. 100), belongs to a class of implements which in this country were generally post-neolithic (p. 78, supra); an elegant bowl which was obtained by Canon Greenwell in a cairn on Largie Farm, near Crinan (Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot., xxxvi, 1902, pp. 165-7), although neolithic in form, is somewhat similar to a food-vessel figured in Brit. Barrows, p. 88, fig. 73, which, like it, is ornamented with vertical flutings; and one of the drinking-cups deposited in the same cairn is ‘almost identical in size, shape, and ornamentation’ with a specimen that was associated with a bronze dagger in a barrow on Roundway Hill, Wiltshire (Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot., vi, 1867, pp. 345, n. 1, 347). I conclude that these cairns were locally of neolithic age, but that the influence of the later culture had made itself felt in the district,—in short, that they belonged to a period of transition.
[412] M. de Baye exaggerates when he says (L’archéol. préhist., 1888, p. 108) that in France inhumation in the Neolithic Age was almost universal. M. E. Cartailhac (Matériaux pour l’hist. ... de l’homme, xxii, 1888, pp. 1-2, 4, 6-7; La France préhist., 1889, pp. 270-6) gives numerous instances of incineration in neolithic tombs in the departments of the Aisne, the Marne, the Morbihan, &c.
[413] W. C. Borlase, Dolmens of Ireland, ii, 520.
[414] Archaeologia, xlii, 1869, pp. 191-2, 224-6; Journ. Anthr. Inst., v, 1876, p. 129.
[415] Ib.; Guide to the Ant. of the Bronze Age (Brit. Museum), p. 53.