september 15

Day 15

I was afraid to have bad weather in Scotland, but I’ve been lucky so far. Yesterday and today we had beautiful days in Glasgow, apart from a short cloudy mid-day interlude.

I went to the station, where I bought the ticket for tomorrow (I hope Inverness prove to be a good choice). Actually it would be better to go to Orkney Islands, but I have this will to see some more of the lands of Scotland besides really worried about the weather. Orkney is reputedly the most important place in Scotland pre historical society.

In my map Inverness is not in bad position though, as it contains a lot of Neolithic monuments. It can be interesting, I am just not sure. Nearby there is the world famous Loch Ness, where I expect NOT to see any monster around.

My day in Glasgow was not meant to find anything relevant to my research, I must admit. I just wanted to see the city and walk around, see some of the collections here, nothing serious, really. I am in a this new place and I want to enjoy it at least one day.

I went to St.Mungo’s Cathedral, built around 1277, unusually a bit excentric to the city center. The Cathedral is being reformed, but it was possible to visit. Although a truly 13^th century building, it don’t show the usual medieval allegorical exuberance in stone carvings. Mostly are merely decorative, exception made to some detail in the outside and a ruined Green Man that is on display amongst other stone pieces in the sacristy.




Nevertheless the Cathedral is a beautiful building, with some nice spaces, like underground chapels and accesses.


The most important collection in Glasgow besides the Hunter Collection, is the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, which is not very far from the University.

Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum

It contains mixed yet well organized items that goes from Second World War airplanes and skeletons of extinct animals to Dutch, French and Italian paintings, sarcophagus and a design center. This miscellanea include some pre historical material very interesting to me: flints, stone balls, and other specific Scottish pre historical objects.

red deer, now extinct

It is necessary to say that the human settlement in Scotland is not perceptible until some time after the end of the Ice Age. The land was too frozen to allow permanent human settlers to survive. At this period, before agriculture, life depended largely on seasonal products like nuts and fruits, hunting and fishing. The society was always able to move whenever necessary to take advantage of the distinct resources of food.

In a frozen Scotland man could only arrive after 11.000 years ago, and first traces of humans are found around 8.500 B.C., as the climate was warmer.

So the first humans there were already modern humans, organized in a hunter-gatherer society. In Scotland the fishing and oyster collecting were crucial for the survival of those first settlers. The trade with Ireland and England was effective and it is possible to find flint objects from distinct places, as far as Central Europe.

In time is possible that this society have received the new concepts of agriculture and farming animals in the Bronze age era, but it seems that in Scotland while some of the these innovations were quite fast to spread like pottery, others like farming took a while until being absorbed by the society. This can reflect that some of the necessities were already fulfilled. Whatever the reasons the society of Scotland, as in Ireland, Wales and England evolved in their own distinctive way, although is possible to note that there were trade between them.

In Scotland like in Ireland there is a remarkable number of stone carvings and cup marks (round marks in the stones), while there is not such a feature in England, and only a pair in Wales.

Again the graceful stone balls are found in the collection, quite similar in size as in pattern of those I’ve seen before in London, Wales, Ireland and in Glasgow Hunterian Collection. At Kelvingrove there are three of them.

The equivalent to them in the architecture would be the Brochs, round towers which is only possible to find in Scotland and in distant places like South Italy. These round towers are not to be confounded with the Irish round towers that date from early Christian times, in general around the years 700 and 800. The Scottish Broches are from the Iron age, barely a thousand years before, and are quite distinctive. The Brochs are much wider in the base, and have a double wall inside. It was suggested that it was built in a way to shelter the animals when necessary, and the people would stay in a higher floor.

Other original feature were the Crannogs, houses from the Iron age built in artificial islands in lakes, making it quite inaccessible from the outside unless you reach by boat.

I hope I will be lucky enough to see some of those it in the next few days.

day 14, september

Day 14

I decided use my last days of the travel to know Scotland, or at least what I can in the time that I still have. After a week in London I was ready to go again. I could do most of what I have planned and some of my trips were really remarkable. There are some things that could have been better, but if I have to choose, I would not change much. The surprises are always welcome in researches like mine.

I left London via Euston to Glasgow at 9:30 and arrived in Central Glasgow exactly at 14:00. The trains in England are famed for its very good timing, and they should. Despite of being half-sleep and my bad location in most of the journey, I could appreciate the landscape. At some point we had more hilly and reforested (Pinus) landscape. Amongst the few cities I could spot, Carslile call my attention for the medieval remains and looked a bit more interesting place. It is where Hadriann Wall starts and crosses the country, wisely devised where the land gets strait. The wall was constructed to create a barrier against the raids of the Celtic hoards.

The Roman invasion in Scotland by Agricula around the year 80, and reached as far as Glasgow and Edinburgh, where a previous wall was constructed (the Antonine Wall), but it could not go much further. It was very expansive to keep the war against the Caledonians and other tribus, and after a while the Romans had to refrain. As Agricula left the northern position, the position was lost and the wall was left into ruins.

The city as we know today was founded in the 6^th century by St. Mungo, an early Christian preacher. There is no much traces of early settlement in Glasgow, but some miles around is possible to find several remains of older civilizations.

After my regular booking and going to the B&B, I tried to visit the Hunter Collection here in Glasgow. Looking for pictures from the John Hunter Collection that I have visited in London, I’ve discovered that his brother William Hunter had this famous collection at the Glasgow University, so it was a good day to visit it.

Dr. William hunter was a pioneering obstetrician and teacher, apart of collector. His collection is of wide scope and today is one of the most important in Scotland. Apart from the Hunterian Museum, the Zoology Museum, the Anatomy and the Art Gallery are shown very close, and are held by the Glasgow University. The University was founded in 1451, and have a very neat building.

To me was of particular interest to see the pottery used in bronze age time to bury ashes and bones. Mostly are marked with patterns in the outside, made with sticks and sometimes with the fingers. Some studies suggests that the distinct patterns that can mean something about the identity of the person buried, as some sort of identification.




There are abundance of flints, hand axes and spears of all shapes and sizes, as the collection incorporated some Irish pieces too. The insulation lead the Irish tools to have some distinction from the English and the Scottish ones.

The same independent development can be said about some objects that are only observed in Scotland, specifically the stone balls that the Hunterian Collection has more pieces than any other collection I’ve seem so far. These stone balls richly and originally decorated has no explanation of use so far. They are some of the most beautiful and mysterious objects of the stone age, and the fact that no theory can even be proposed for them, make it even more exciting. I’ve seen them at the British Museum and at Dublin Museum. Some of the patterns are repeated, suggesting some tradition in doing it.

There are some bronze age findings of excavations like pottery, beads, bone remains. It is quite interesting to see them together, although out of the original context.

The collection has some good skull fossils of the Homo family, and they trace a short story containing the Homo Sapiens (200.000 until now), the cast of an Homo Erectus (from 70.000 to 1.8 million years ago), a cast of an Homo Habilis (2 million year) and of an Austrophitecine (2.5 million years ago).

There is a skull from an excavation in 1900 in Clachaing falls, at the Arran island. It is called the Clachaig skull, and was founded amongst the remains of other fourteen men, women and children. Studies proved that it was from the Neolithic age, between 4.000 and 2.500 BC.

There is a lot more in the collection, as it spans a really wide range of interests. I still must see the rest of it, and probably will do tomorrow. There are also some other collections in the city worthy to visit. I know there are some archeological sites around the town, but they all seem very difficult to reach as long I know. So I will concentrate in the city and some collections. It seems that there are good material here and in two days I must go to Inverness where it seems that there are a lot to see in the field.

I did not mentioned yet, but Glasgow looks a gorgeous city, and I had a very good time walking around here today. So I want to enjoy it better than spend the day in somewhere far and get back tired and late.

Tomorrow I will know if it was a good decision.

Day 13

Day 13 of September, Sunday.

I finally did nothing but organizing my life this Sunday. And you want to know something? My feet were dry most of the time.

The photos here are from the beautiful walk on saturday.

day 12

Day 12

The Long Man, Wilmington

Saturday morning, I had accorded to go with my friend Katherine Bash to the Long Man in Wilmington. Katherine was somehow following the whole process of my project since the beginning, and her ideas are important to me. I had a good time with her even without showing specifically something finished. She is one of those persons that have an inspiring effect in the whole thing.

We met at Victoria Station and went to Eastbourne, way down south. Eastbourne was one the few places that Katherine know in the U.K., so I’ve been feeling a bit guilty when she mentioned it. She’d been at the city – which is a seaside boulevard, and at the Seven Sisters, a series of chalk cliffs not far from there. For my easy, she have never been to the long man and had no knowledge of it before. Even better.

We took the train to Polegate and a cab from there to Wilmington. It proved a good choice, as we get there so fast.

The Long Man is a chalk drawing at a hill side, depicting a man with two poles or in an alternative interpretation – and very poetic indeed- someone opening a gate. The graphic picture don’t allow too much precision, but it is not necessary: the Long Man is one of extreme fanciness.

The figure is quite long, a bit more of 69 meters, and it is considered the largest figure of its kind. It is not mentioned until the 17^th century, and in those old times it was a relief covered with grass. Today it is an inlaid drawing in the ground, made of regular shapes –looks like concrete, although I did not get so close to know, painted in white. The lines are scored by some of those concrete shapes in order to not slide from its position.

So one can imagine the much it has changed since then.

Modern interferences can be quite annoying for the ones which researches, as it never again will have the original appearance. To be strict no site excavated will ever be the same after being excavate, but some of interferences are quite strong. Enough is to remember the Newgrange façade and imagine if it ever been that way, despite of all the hard work and good will of the team working there.

Again, we don’t know how old is the Long Man. The site is one of the most astonishing I have seem, in one side a hill that is seem for miles in most direction you look at. A mountain chain at the left of the drawing links both places very clearly. Earthworks in the chalk are seem all around. A little flat top hill and ditch at the foot of the drawing is very connected to it.

At the other side of the mountain, there is a wonderful valley and it is very easy to spot the sea at no long distance from there. The whole mountain is made of chalk and it is indeed a very unusual, to say less. The white floor all around covered in green by the grass is a very strange sight. We’ve been wandering if the stones associate with the chalk could be useful for any industry, like fling for instance.



On the top of the hill, another very clear round ditch and barrel, several earthworks of all kinds. The Hill is the highest place in sight and is a very influential point in the landscape. And in the stone age it is clear that these points were to be used quite frequently, for ceremonial and later for settlements.

Looking at the map later, I could find some of the most visible Ley Lines ever. There are barrels, ditches, tumulus all along both the mountains. No doubt the Long Man , if is not an ancient figure, is placed in the right place to be one.

It was great to be with someone in this little field investigation. I believe Katherine enjoyed as much as me, and it was not the Eastbourne she knew, even though it was so close to it.