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X.—On a Bronze Age Cemetery and other antiquities at Largs, Ayrshire

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 November 2011

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A portion of the town of Largs is built on a raised beach which here attains a breadth of nearly a mile, though in general it is a mere strip of flat land along the coast. This low ground is fertile, and beyond it rises a picturesque background of grassy hills which shelter the town and bay on the east, a combination of natural advantages which must have rendered the locality an attractive place of abode for man from the earliest times. A plot of cultivated land, near the termination of Nelson Street which intersects the raised beach, was acquired by a townsman as the site of a small villa. The area selected was slightly more elevated than the vacant ground on the east side, but its relative height with respect to its western boundary was uncertain, owing to the land there having been already built upon. It would, however, be no exaggeration to describe it as a low gravelly mound. While digging the foundations of the proposed villa nothing of an archaeological character attracted attention, but later on, in course of some outside operations close to the south wall of the newly erected building, the workmen came upon a small cinerary urn containing calcined bones. The vessel was shaped like a modern flower-pot, without any ornamentation, and stood mouth upwards, having, apparently, been simply deposited in a hole in the gravel. It appears to have been extracted in fragments, and dispersed among private collectors.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1910

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References

page 244 note 1 The urn figured by Mr. Fullarton belongs to the overhanging rim type and, except forits ornamentation, is precisely similar to the Largs specimen represented in figs. 2 and 3.

page 245 note 1 Proc. S. A. Scot. xli. 187Google Scholar.

page 246 note 1 Proc. S. A. Scot. xxxvi. 100Google Scholar.

page 246 note 2 Ibid. xvii. 453.

page 246 note 3 Ibid. vii. 499.

page 246 note 4 Ibid. xiii. 113.

page 247 note 1 Proc. R. S. Edin. xxvi. 293Google Scholar.

page 247 note 2 Ibid. xxvi. 305.

page 248 note 1 A writer in a local guide says: “In it were found five stone coffins, two containing a number of skulls, besides other bones, and several urns. An immense quantity of bones was found in the cairn not enclosed in the coffins.” I need not say that no one now believes that any of these cairns were the burial-places of Norwegians who were killed at the battle of Largs.

page 248 note 2 Archaeologia Scotica, ii. 382Google Scholar, circa 1822.