Page:The Ancient Stone Implements (1897).djvu/466

and the adjacent islands, consists of cup-like vessels formed of stone, of various degrees of hardness, and usually provided with a small projecting handle.

Fig. 362.—Scotland.

Fig. 363.—Sutherlandshire.

Fig. 362, borrowed from the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland,^[1] will serve to show their general character. Of the two cups here engraved, one was found near a megalithic circle at Crookmore, Tullynessle, Aberdeenshire, and the other in another part of Scotland. The material is described as a soft calcareous stone. One of steatite or "pot-stone," with a large unpierced handle, was found in a cairn at Drumkesk,^[2] near Aboyne, Aberdeenshire; and two others, one with the handle projecting from the side, and the other with a long straight handle, at Strathdon^[3] in the same county. Two others, one of them of micaceous sandstone, ornamented with a band of rudely-cut projecting knobs, and the other with incised lines in zigzag herring-bone patterns, were dug out of a large cairn on Knockargity,^[4] and others at Cromar,^[5] also in Aberdeenshire. One ornamented in a similar manner was found at Needless,^[6] Perth. Others have been found in cairns in Banffshire,^[7] Morayshire,^[8] and Sutherlandshire,^[9] the engraving of the last of which is here reproduced as Fig. 363. It is 61/2 inches in diameter. They have also been found in brochs, in Caithness,^[10] Shetland,^[11] and in a "fort" in Forfarshire.^[12] They have likewise been discovered under various circumstances in Aberdeenshire,^[13] at Balmoral,^[14] and in Forfarshire,^[15] Perthshire,^[16] and the Isle of Skye,^[17] as well as in the Isle of Man.^[18]

1. Vol. i. p. 117. Wilson's "Preh. Ann. of Scot.," vol. i. p. 207.
2. Proc. Soc. Ant., 2nd S., vol. iii. p. 266.
3. Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot., vol. v. pp. 30, 83.
4. P. S. A. S., vol. vi. p. 89.
5. "Cat. Arch. Inst. Mus. Ed.," p. 20.
6. Proc. S. A. S., vol. xxii. p. 111.
7. P. S. A. S., vol. i. p. 138.
8. "Cat. A. I. Mus. Ed.," p. 18. P. S. A. S., vol. i. p. 267.
9. Arch. Journ., vol. xxvi. p. 186.
10. Arch. Scot., vol. iii. app. 50.
11. Arch. Scot., vol. iii. app. 89.
12. P. S. A. S., vol. ii. pp. 64, 71.
13. P. S. A. S., vol. vii. p. 320.
14. Ibid., vol. v. p. 82.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid., vol. vi. p. 12.
17. Ibid., vol. i. p. 180.
18. Arch. Journ., vol. xiii. p. 104. "Cat. A. I. Mus. Ed.," p 47. P. S. A. S., vol. ii. p. 330. Arch. Camb., 3rd S., vol. xi. p. 429.