Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, April 1899: Volume LIV, No. 6, April 1899Various
Science
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, April 1899: Volume LIV, No. 6, April 1899
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
=A Neolithic Lake Dwelling.=--A crannog, or lake dwelling, discovered
in the summer of 1898 on the banks of the Clyde, has received much
attention from English archæologists because of its unique situation
on a tidal stream, and of its being apparently neolithic or far more
ancient than any other crannog yet examined, in all others the relics
being of the bronze age. Careful excavations have been made in it and
are still in progress, and the refuse mound of the former settlement
has been sifted, with results that have made it plain that there were
design and execution in the building, and that it was occupied and
inhabited for a long period. Positive evidence of fire is afforded in
the shape of numerous firestones and calcined embers, and indications
of the condition of life at the period are given by the implements,
ornaments, and tools recovered. The crannog is about sixteen hundred
yards east of the Castle Rock of Dumbarton, and about fifty yards from
the river at low tide, but is submerged when the tide is in to a depth
of from three to twelve feet, and is one hundred and eighty-four feet
in circuit. The piles in the outer circle are of oak, which below the
mud surface is still quite fresh. The transverse beams and pavement
inside are of wood of the consistence of cheese--willow, alder, and
oak--while the smaller branches are of fir, birch, and hazel, with
bracken, moss, and chips. The stones in the outer circle and along the
causeway leading to the dwelling place seem to have been set in a
methodical order, most of the bowlders being about a lift for a man.
The refuse mound extends for about twelve feet outside for the
greater part of the circuit, and here most of the bone and flint
implements have been discovered. The largest article found in the site
was a very fine canoe, thirty-seven feet long and forty inches beam,
dug out of a single oak tree, which lay in what has proved to have
been a dock. A curious ladder was also found here, the rungs of which
were cut out of the solid wood, and which has somewhat the general
appearance of a post of a post-and-rail fence. The exploration of the
site is much interfered with by the rising of the tide, which covers
the crannog for a considerable time every day. All the relics
found--consisting chiefly of objects of bone, staghorn, jet, chert,
and cannel coal, with some querns, the canoe, ladder, etc.--have been
placed in the museum at Glasgow.
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