The Clyde Mystery

XXXII – DISPUTED OBJECTS FROM DUNBUIE

The faker occasionally changes his style. We have seen what slovenly designs in the archaic cup and ring and incomplete circle style he dumped down at Dumbuck. I quote Dr. Munro on his doings at Dunbuie, where the faker occasionally drops a pear-shaped slate perforated stone, with a design in cupules. Dr. Munro writes:

“The most meaningless group – if a degree of comparison be admissible in regard to a part when the whole is absolutely incomprehensible on archaeological principles – consists of a series of unprepared and irregularly shaped pieces of laminated sandstone (plate xvi.) similar to some of the stones of which the fort of Dunbuie was built, ¹⁴³ having one of their surfaces decorated with small cup-marks, sometimes symmetrically arranged so far as to indicate parts of geometrical figures, and at other times variously combined with lines and circles. Two fragments of bones, also from Dunbuie, are similarly adorned (plate xvi. nos. 13, 14). Eleven of the twelve sandstone fragments which make up the group were fractured in such a manner as to suggest that the line of fracture had intersected the original ornamentation, and had thus detached a portion of it. If this be so, there must have been originally at least two or three other portions which, if found, would fit along the margin of each of the extant portions, just as the fragments of a broken urn come together. Yet among these decorated stones not one single bit fits another, nor is any of the designs the counterpart of another. If we suppose that these decorated stones are portions of larger tablets on which the designs were completed, then either they were broken before being introduced into the debris of the fort, or the designs were intentionally executed in an incomplete state, just as they are now to be seen on the existing natural splinters of stone. The supposition that the occupiers of the fort possessed the original tablets, and that they had been smashed on the premises, is excluded by the significant fact that only one fragment of each tablet has been discovered. For, in the breaking up of such tablets, it would be inconceivable, according to the law of chances, that one portion, and only one, of each different specimen would remain while all the others had disappeared. On the other hand, the hypothesis that the occupiers of the fort carved these designs on the rough and unprepared splinters of stone in the precise manner they now come before us, seems to me to involve premeditated deception, for it is difficult to believe that such uncompleted designs could have any other finality of purpose.

Looking at these geometrical figures from the point of technique, they do not make a favourable impression in support of their genuineness. The so-called cup-marks consist of punctures of two or three different sizes, so many corresponding to one size and so many to another. The stiffness of the lines and circles reminds one more of ruler and compass than of the freehand work of prehistoric artists. The patterns are unprecedented for their strange combinations of art elements. For example, no. 9, plate xvi., looks as if it were a design for some modern machinery. The main ornament on another fragment of sandstone (no. 12), consisting of a cross and circle composed of a series of cup-marls, seems to be a completed design; but yet at the corner there are lines which are absolutely meaningless, unless we suppose that they formed part of a more enlarged tablet. Similar remarks apply to nos. 3 and 8.”

Is it really contrary to “the law of chances” that, in some 1200 years of unknown fortunes, no two fragments of the same plates of red sandstone (some dozen in number) should be found at Dunbuie? Think of all that may have occurred towards the scattering of fragments of unregarded sandstone before the rise of soil hid them all from sight. Where is the smaller portion of the shattered cup and ring marked sandstone block found in the Lochlee crannog? On the other hand, in the same crannog, a hammerstone broken in two was found, each half in a different place, as were two parts of a figurine at Dumbuck. Where are the arms of the Venus of Milo, vainly sought beside and around the rest of the statue? Where are the lost noses, arms, and legs of thousands of statues? Nobody can guess where they are or how they vanished. Or where are the lost fragments of countless objects in pottery found in old sites?

It was as easy for the forger to work over a whole plaque of sandstone, break it, and bury the pieces, as for him to do what he has done.

These designs make an unfavourable impression because some, not all of them, are stiff and regular. The others make an unfavourable impression because they are so laxly executed. For what conceivable purpose did the forger here resort to the aid of compasses, and elsewhere do nothing of the kind? Why should the artist, if an old resident of Dunbuie fort, not have compasses, like the Cairn-wight of Lough Crew?

On inspecting the pieces, in the Museum, the regularity of design seems to me to be much exaggerated in Dr. Munro’s figures, by whom drawn we are not informed.

As to Dr. Munro’s figure 12, it seems to me to aim at a Celtic cross and circle, while part of his figure 3 suggests a crozier, and there is a cross on figure 18, as on a painted pebble from a broch in Caithness. The rest I cannot profess to explain; they look like idle work on sandstone, but may have had a meaning to their fashioner. His meaning, and that of the forger who here changes his style, are equally inscrutable.

I return to a strange perforated pebble, an intaglio from Dumbuck.

Dr. Munro quotes, as to this pebble, the Journal of the British Archaeological Association: “In the September number of the Journal (p. 282) we are informed that a slaty spear-head, an arrow-head of bone, and a sinker stone were found in the débris inside the canoe. ‘In the cavity of a large bone,’ says the writer, ‘was also got an ornament of a peculiar stone. The digger unearthed it from the deposit at the bottom of the canoe, about 14 feet from the bow and near to a circular hole cut in the bottom about 3½ inches in diameter.’ What a funny place to hide a precious ornament, for I take this peculiar stone to be that with the human hand incised on one side and three men rowing in a boat on the other! (see plate xv. no. 10).”

Here the place of discovery in the canoe is given with precision, and its place within the cavity of the bone is pronounced by Dr. Munro to be “funny.” As to the three men in a boat, the Rev. Geo. Wilson of Glenluce, on Feb. 14, 1887, presented to the Scots Antiquaries a bugle-shaped pendant of black shale or cannel-coal 2¼ inches long, with a central groove for suspension. On one side of the pendant was incised a sketch of two figures standing up in a boat or canoe with a high prow. The pendant is undisputed, the pebble is disputed, and we know nothing more about the matter (see fig. 25).

XXXIII – DISPUTABLE AND CERTAINLY FORGED OBJECTS

In his judicious remarks to the Society of Antiquaries, (Proceedings, xxxiv.,) Dr. Joseph Anderson observed that opinions would probably vary as to certain among the disputed objects. Among these are the inscribed oyster shells. I see nothing a priori improbable in the circumstance that men who incised certain patterns on schist or shale, should do so on oyster shells. Palaeolithic man did his usual sporting sketches on shells, and there was a vast and varied art of designing on shells among the pre-Columbian natives of North America. ¹⁴⁴ We here see the most primitive scratches developing into full-blown Aztec art.

If the markings were only on such inscribed shells as mouldered away – so Mr. Bruce tells us – when exposed to light and air, (I do not know whether the designs were copied before the shells crumbled,) these conchological drawings would not trouble us. No modern could make the designs on shells that were hurrying into dust. We have Mr. Bruce’s word for these mouldering shells, and we have the absolute certainty that such decomposing shells could not be incised by a hand of to-day, as shale, slate, schist, and sandstone can now be engraved upon, fraudulently.

But when, as Professor Boyd Dawkins writes, the finds include “two fresh shells.. unmistakable Blue Points,” drilled with perforations, or inscribed, from Dunbuie, then there are only two possible alternatives.

1. They were made by the faker, or

2. They were “interpolated” into the Dunbuie site by somebody.

The forger himself is, I think, far too knowing a man to fake inscriptions on fresh shells, even if, not being a conchologist, he did not know that the oysters were American blue points.

I have written in vain if the reader, while believing in the hypothesis of a forger, thinks him such an egregious ass. For Blue Points as non-existent save in America, 1 rely on Prof. Boyd Dawkins.

As the public were allowed to break off and steal the prow of the Dumbuck canoe, it is plain that no guard was placed on the sites. They lay open for months to the interpolations of wags, and I think, for my own part, that one of them is likely to have introduced the famous blue points.

Dr. Munro tells us how a “large-worked stone,” a grotesque head, was foisted through a horizontal hole, into the relic bed of his kitchen midden at Elie. “It lay under four inches of undisturbed black earth.” But it had been “interpolated” there by some “lousy tykes of Fife,” as the anti-covenanting song calls them. ¹⁴⁵

It was rather easier to interpolate Blue Point oyster shells at Dunbuie. On the other hand, two splinters of stone, inserted into a bone and a tyne of deer’s horn, figured by Dr. Munro among Dumbuck and Dunbuie finds, seem to me rather too stupid fakes for the regular forger, and a trifle too clever for the Sunday holiday-maker. These two things I do not apologise for, or defend; my knowledge of primitive implements is that of a literary man, but for what it is worth, it does not incline me to regard these things as primitive implements.

XXXIV – CONCLUSION

Explicit! I have tried to show cause why we should not bluntly dismiss the mass of disputed objects as forgeries, but should rest in a balance of judgment, file the objects for reference, and await the results of future excavations. If there be a faker, I hope he appreciates my sympathetic estimate of his knowledge, assiduity, and skill in leger de main.

I am the forger’s only friend, and I ask him to come forward and make a clean breast of it, like the young men who hoaxed the Society for Psychical Research with a faked wraith, or phantasm of the living.

 
“Let it fully now suffice,
The gambol has been shown!”
 

It seems to me nearly equally improbable that a forger has been at work on a large scale, and that sets of objects, unexampled in our isle, have really turned up in some numbers. But then the Caithness painted pebbles were equally without precedent, yet are undisputed. The proverbial fence seems, in these circumstances, to be the appropriate perch for Science, in fact a statue of the Muse of Science might represent her as sitting, in contemplation, on the fence. The strong, the very strong point against authenticity is this: numbers of the disputed objects were found in sites of the early Iron Age. Now such objects, save for a few samples, are only known, – and that in non-British lands, – in Neolithic sites. The theory of survival may be thought not to cover the number of the disputed objects.