Fig. 188.—Inlaid Ornament of Mixed Metal from Lagore. Two-thirds real size.
Miscellaneous Articles.—It would be impossible to classify all the articles brought to light on lacustrine sites; indeed the use to which some of them were, or could be, applied must now be purely conjectural, so widely do the habits of life in the present advanced state of society differ from the rude and primitive existence of the lake dweller. To the representation of objects, whose use could not now be defined with any degree of accuracy, have been added—since the work went to press—a few plates of miscellaneous articles that fell under the writer’s observation in the interval. They are of interest, as throwing still further light on the details of the lake dwellers’ ordinary pursuits.
Amongst the debris of crannogs have been found several designs carved upon the polished surface of the larger bones of mammalia. Sir W. Wilde observed that clear, sharp, and accurate impressions might be made from some of these carvings in the same way that proofs are taken from a woodcut. In some instances the pattern is elaborately finished, and would answer equally well “as a design for the panel of a stone cross, the decoration of a doorway, or cornice of a round tower, a compartment of a brooch pin, the capital of an early ecclesiastical archway, the illumination of a MS., or the graving of a piece of warlike furniture.” An example of this kind of decoration is shown on [plate XXXII., fig. 1]; it is the leg bone of a deer, 8½ inches long, highly polished, and covered with carvings; its precise use is as yet conjectural. [Figs. 3, 4, 5], are fac-similes of the embossed patterns on this bone.
Plate XXXII.
Fig. 1. Decorated Bone from Ardakillen. One-third real size.
Fig. 2. Decorated Bone from Lagore. One-third real size.
Fig. 3. Fig. 4. Fig. 5. Embossed Patterns on fig. 1. Real size.