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Stone Cists

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 May 2015

O. G. S. Crawford
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Extract

Cists are often met with on the open moors of Britain, and a brief account of them may therefore be of interest.

First, a few words about terminology. Our predecessors used also the words ‘Kist’ and ‘Kist-vaen’, and indeed the latter word still survives in some of our remoter western districts. ‘Kist-vaen’ is however an impossible word ; it was invented by antiquaries to whom all prehistoric monuments were ‘Celtic’, requiring therefore a Celtic name. Since the original name was unknown, new ones had to be invented. In the days when the words of Authority were heard with undue respect and awkward questions were seldom put, those spurious terms obtained wide currency. The word ‘cist’ has long been used by Scottish archaeologists, and it is the one adopted by the British Ordnance Survey.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 2 , Issue 8 , December 1928 , pp. 418 - 422
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1928

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References

* Two Scottish cists belong to the Early Iron Age, one on Kippit Hill, Dolphinton (Lanarkshire), and the other at Moredun, near Gilmerton (Edinburgh). See Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot., XXXVIII, 427 and LV, 45.Google Scholar

1 Ancient Britain, Oxford, 1907, p. 428.Google ScholarPubMed

2 To these may be added the illustrated Catalogue of specimens from prehistoric interments found in the N.E. of Scotland, and preserved in the Anthropological Museum, Marischal College, Aberdeen, by Reid, R.W. M.D., 1924;Google Scholar Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot., 39, 418;Google Scholar and MrCallander’s, numerous notes on cists in Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot. 40, 26; XLI, 116; XLII, 212 (urn in cist) ; XLIII, 78 (five cists) ; XLVIII, 194; L, 150 ; LIII, 15 ; LV, 45 (Iron Age cist) ; LVI, 32 ; LVII, 299 ; LVIII, 286.Google Scholar

3 Crawford, Long Barrows of the Cotswolds, 1925, pp. 18, 19.Google Scholar

4 Proc. Arch. Inst. Salisbury (1849, published 1851), p 107.Google Scholar

5 Proc. Soc. Ant. Lond. ser. 2, 25 191.Google Scholar

6 Proc. Soc. Ant. Lond. ser. 2, 17, 376–7 ; 6” o.s. map, Kent, 31 sw.Google Scholar