Page:Annals of Duddingston and Portobello.pdf/44

Rh high, which crumbled to fragments; and a skeleton without a coffin, said to be that of a full-grown female. All these different interments were from four to six feet below the level of the ground, and about three feet down in the bed of sand. The piece of ground in which these remains were found lies along the sea shore, and is now faced with heavy stones towards the sea, and partly built upon, but tradition points to similar urns having been found formerly in the samelocality.

In a note on the subject Dr Joseph Anderson says :—

“The urns found in this remarkable cemetery are all of the same form and character. They belong to the largest variety of sepulchral vessels formed of clay, and some of them are specially remarkable on account of their size and the elaborate nature of their ornamentation. They all contained burnt bones and ashes, and are therefore cinerary urns, i.e., they are receptacles in which the bones of the burnt bodies were placed within the cists or graves in which they were deposited. They are the usual form of the cinerary urns of the Bronze age — the lower part plain and flower-pot shaped, and the upper part more or less decorated.”

In 1821 three stone coffins were discovered under a tumulus of sand midway between Portobello and Craigentinnie. These were rudely put together, and each contained a human skeleton. "The bones were quite entire,” says the Weekly Journal for that year, !and from their position it would appear that the bodies had been buried with their legs across. At the head of each was deposited a number of flints. The cavities of the skeletons were quite filled with vegetable matter.”

During the construction of the carriage way round Arthur's Seat in 1846, while the workmen were excavating the soil immediately above "Samson’s Ribs,” they uncovered a sepulchral deposit containing a cinerary urn, which was unfortunately broken