XXIX. The Ardrossan Shell-mound, with an account of its Excavation

Abstract

In various parts of the world, notably along the Baltic coasts of the Danish islands, the eastern coasts of America, and near the shores of many of the Western Islands of Scotland, are found mounds of varied size composed for the most part of shells of the edible species of molluscs, such as limpets, periwinkles, cockles, and oysters. Interspersed with these are found the bones of many mammals and birds; also weapons and tools of flint, dolerite, horn, bone, and wood, including celts, scrapers, chisels, arrow-heads, slingstones, anchor stones, and other articles which had been made and used by a prehistoric race of men. In Denmark these mounds, which are called kjökken mödding, reach the dimensions of from 100 to 1000 feet in length and from 3 to 10 feet high. They have yielded many implements made of similar materials to those above mentioned; but no articles manufactured from any kind of metal have ever been found in them. From this circumstance these shell-mounds have been referred by archæologists to the neolithic division of the Stone age. The shell-mounds of the American coasts have a great resemblance to the Danish ones, also containing implements, bones, &c, and are supposed to have been formed by the aboriginal inhabitants previous to the occupation of America by the “white man.” The Scottish shell-mounds are, generally speaking, smaller than any of the others, but, like them, contain the bones of animals, and stone, horn and bone weapons and implements. In the Western Islands of This 250-word extract was created in the absence of an abstract