_
XVIII - CUP MARKS IN CRANNOGS
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.
{73a} L'Anthropologie , vol. xiv. p. 338.
{73b} Proc. S.A.S. , 1878-1879.
{73c} Op. cit. pp. 208, 210.
{74} Bruce, ut supra , p. 446.
{75} Bureau of Ethnology , Report of 1888-1889, p. 193. _