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Others appear to contain no cists. In the other islands of the west coast few circles seem to remain; there are, however, one at Kirkabrost in Skye, and another at Kingarth in Bute. At Stromness in Orkney is the famous circle called the Ring of Brogar. It originally consisted of sixty stones forming a circle 340 feet in diameter, outside which was a ditch 29 feet wide.
Sometimes these cists or small rooms form part of a village, more often they are attached to the cliff outlooks, and not infrequently they stand alone on sites overlooking the lands whose product they contained. It is probable that many of the cliff outlooks themselves were used quite as much for temporary storage as for habitations during the farming season.
These cists or cubby-holes range in size from a foot to 5 feet in diameter, and are nearly always on a level of the floor, although in some instances they extend below it. Storage cists are also sometimes excavated in the exterior walls of the cliffs, and occasionally they are partly excavated and partly inclosed by a rough, semicircular wall. An example of the latter type is shown in figure 290.
He at once began to tell me that, in the estuary of the Clyde, and at Dunbuie, some one had found small stones, marked with the same archaic kinds of patterns, "cup-and-ring," half circles, and so forth, as exist on our inscribed rocks, cists, and other large objects.
Many of the sites do not show the faintest trace of house structures; some of them have remains of storage cists, and many have remains of Navaho burial cists, associated with pictographs not of Navaho origin.
It is also said that in the olden days, when the Navaho considered De Chelly their stronghold and the heart of their country, the remains of prominent men of the tribe were often brought to the canyon for interment in the ruins. Such burials are still made, both in the ruins themselves and in cists on similar sites.
The annual emigration of the Navaho commences soon after the harvest, and at intervals during the winter and spring, and in summer, if the supply is not then exhausted, visits are paid to the cists and portions of the grain are carried away.
Owing to their similarity, particularly in point of size, it is difficult to draw a line between small rooms and large storage cists, but including the latter there are two hundred rooms on the main level, divided into seventy-four distinct and separate sets. These sets comprise from one to fourteen rooms each.
It is not meant that the crops when gathered were placed in these cists and kept there until used. The harvest was, as a rule, permanently stored in the home villages, and the cists were used only for temporary storage. Doubtless the old practice resembled somewhat that followed by the Navaho today.
This may be due to the use of the rectangular rooms as sites for Navaho burial cists, of which there are no fewer than six here, and possibly the kiva walls furnished the necessary building material for the construction of the cists. The old masonry is of good quality, the outside wall being formed of selected stones of medium size, well laid and carefully chinked.
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