United States or Egypt ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Sir John Evans does not reject the pear-shaped object of shale, "a pendant," found in a Scottish site, and associated with querns, and an iron axe, and cup and ring stones. Sir John sees no harm in the "pendant," but Dr. Munro rejects a "pear-shaped" claystone "pendant" decorated with "cup-shaped indentations," found at Dunbuie.
For what conceivable purpose did the forger here resort to the aid of compasses, and elsewhere do nothing of the kind? Why should the artist, if an old resident of Dunbuie fort, not have compasses, like the Cairn-wight of Lough Crew? On inspecting the pieces, in the Museum, the regularity of design seems to me to be much exaggerated in Dr. Munro's figures, by whom drawn we are not informed.
One, from New Jersey, with two holes, exactly as in the Dunbuie example, was much akin in ornament to the Portuguese plaques. One, of slate, was plain, as plain as "a bit of gas coal with a round hole bored through it," recorded by Dr. Munro from Ashgrove Loch crannog.
How did the two sets of objects come to be all mixed up together, in an old hill fort, at Dunbuie on Clyde; and among the wooden foundations of two mysterious structures, excavated in the mud of the Clyde estuary at Dumbuck and Langbank, near Dumbarton? They were dug up between 1896 and 1902. This is the question which has been debated, mainly in newspaper controversy, for nearly ten years.
For all that I know, a dweller in Dunbuie might have compasses, like the Lough Crew cairn artist. If I have established the parallelism between Arunta churinga nanja and the disputed Clyde "pendants," which Dr. Munro denies, we are reduced to one of two theories.
In 1896, the hill fort of Dunbuie, "about a mile-and-a-half to the east of Dumbarton Castle, and three miles to the west of the Roman Wall," was discovered by Mr. W. A. Donnelly: that is to say, Mr. Donnelly suggested that the turf might conceal something worth excavating, and the work was undertaken, under his auspices, by the Helensburgh Antiquarian Society. As Mr.
Munro nowhere suggests that any excavator is the guilty "faker." I now quote Dr. Munro's account of the unfamiliar objects alleged to have been found in Dunbuie. He begins by citing the late Mr. Adam Millar, F.S.A.Scot., who described Dunbuie in the Proceedings S. A. Scot. "The fort," writes Mr.
We have seen what slovenly designs in the archaic cup and ring and incomplete circle style he dumped down at Dumbuck. I quote Dr. Munro on his doings at Dunbuie, where the faker occasionally drops a pear-shaped slate perforated stone, with a design in cupules. Dr.
All these are highly ornamented by a fantastic combination of circles, dots, lines, cup-and- rings with or without gutters, and perforations. There are also several oyster-shells, ornamented like some of the shale ornaments, and very similar to the oyster-shell ornaments of Dunbuie.
Why should the schist pendant of the Tappock chamber be all right, if the claystone pendant of Dunbuie be all wrong? One of them seems to me to have as good a claim to our respectful consideration as the other, and, like Sir John Evans, I shall now turn to Portugal in search of similar objects of undisputed authenticity. One plaque is certainly meant to represent the human form.
Word Of The Day