Note 824 — Chapter IV · (continued 2)

Ib., pp. 93-4, 101; Archaeologia, xliii, 1871, p. 386; lii, 1890, pp. 24-5. Cf. J. Anderson, Scotland in Pagan Times,—the Bronze and Stone Ages, p. 76, and E. B. Tylor, Prim. Culture, ii, 1903, pp. 30-43. Mr. J. R. Mortimer (Forty Years’ Researches, pp. lxvi-lxvii) says, ‘If food was essential [to the dead], so would liquid be ... and I do not know of an instance of the remains of animal matter having ever been found in any vase of the true drinking-cup type. That they served the purpose of holding liquid, there can be little doubt’. Mr. Mortimer is more logical than the people of the Bronze Age. His argument would lead to the conclusion that only food or only drink was considered necessary for the dead according as food-vessels or drinking-cups were placed with them. Very likely liquid was sometimes poured into drinking-cups: but for obvious reasons evidence is wanting; whereas evidence exists that they sometimes held food. By ‘the true drinking-cup type’ Mr. Mortimer apparently means the low-brimmed type which Thurnam called γ (see W. Greenwell, Brit. Barrows, p. 95, fig. 82), and which, as we have seen, is confined to Northern Britain; but he is alone in calling this type ‘true’ to the exclusion of the others.