As to cup marks, or _cupules_, little basins styled also _ecuelles_, now
isolated, now grouped, now separate, now joined by hollowed lines, they
are familiar on rocks, funeral cists, and so forth in Asia, Europe, and
North America (and Australia), as M. Cartailhac remarks in reviewing Dr.
Magni's work on Cupped Rocks near Como. {73a} "Their meaning escapes
us," says M. Cartailhac.
These cups, or cupules, or _ecuelles_ occur, not only at Dumbuck, but in
association with a Scottish crannog of the Iron age, admirably described
by Dr. Munro himself. {73b} He found a polished celt, {73c} and a cupped
stone, and he found a fragmentary block of red sandstone, about a foot in
length, inscribed with concentric circles, surrounding a cup. The
remainder of the stone, with the smaller part of the design, was not
found.
Here, then, we have these archaic patterns and marks on isolated stones,
one of them about 13 inches long, in a genuine Scottish crannog, of the
genuine Iron age, while flint celts also occur, and objects of bronze.
Therefore cup markings, and other archaic markings are not unknown or
suspicious things in a genuine pile structure in Scotland. Why, then,
suspect them at Dumbuck? At Dumbuck the cups occur on a triangular block
of sandstone, 14.5 inches long and 4 inches thick. Another cupped block
is of 21.5 inches by 16.5. {74}
No forger brought these cupped stones in his waistcoat pocket.
We have thus made good the point that an isolated cupped stone, and an
isolated stone inscribed with concentric circles round a cup, do occur in
a crannog containing objects of the stone, bronze, and iron ages. The
meaning, if any, of these inscribed stones, in the Lochlee crannog, is
unknown. Many of the disputed objects vary from them in size, while
presenting examples of archaic patterns. Are they to be rejected because
they vary in size?
We see that the making of this class of decorative patterns, whether they
originally had a recognised meaning; or whether, beginning as mere
decorations, perhaps "schematistic" designs of real objects, they later
had an arbitrary symbolic sense imposed upon them, is familiar to
Australians of to-day, who use, indifferently, stone implements of the
neolithic or of the palaeolithic type. We also know that "in a remote
corner of tropical America," the rocks are inscribed with patterns
"typically identical with those engraved in the British rocks." {75}
These markings are in the country of the Chiriquis, an extinct
gold-working neolithic people, very considerable artists, especially in
the making of painted ceramics. The Picts and Scots have left nothing at
all approaching to their pottery work.
These identical patterns, therefore, have been independently evolved in
places most remote in space and in stage of civilisation, while in
Galloway, as I shall show, I have seen some of them scrawled in chalk on
the flag stones in front of cottage doors. The identity of many Scottish
and Australian patterns is undenied, while I disclaim the opinion that,
in each region, they had the same significance.
I have now established the coincidence between the markings of rocks in
Australia, in tropical America, and in Scotland. I have shown that such
markings occur, in Scotland, associated with remains, in a crannog, of
the Age of Iron. They also occur on stones, large (cupped) and small, in
Dumbuck. My next business is, if I can, to establish, what Dr. Munro
denies, a parallelism between these disputed Clyde stones, and the larger
or smaller inscribed stones of the Arunta and Kaitish, in Australia, and
other small stones, decorated or plain, found in many ancient European
sites. Their meaning we know not, but probably they were either reckoned
ornamental, or magical, or both.