Notice of a cinerary urn, containing a small-sized urn (in which were the bones of a child), discovered in Fife-shire : with notes of similar small and cup-like vessels, in the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland / by John Alex. Smith.

Date:
[1871?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Notice of a cinerary urn, containing a small-sized urn (in which were the bones of a child), discovered in Fife-shire : with notes of similar small and cup-like vessels, in the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland / by John Alex. Smith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    tliem, albeit unskilled in human anatomy though they were, as they ob- served what appeared to them to be portions of shoulder-blades of different sizes, which they supposed might possibly be those of children of different ages. On making a careful examination of the contents of the small urn, I found it still contained the calcined remains of several bones, which, from their character and small size, might probably have belonged to a child. The urn also contained a compact mass of indurated ashes, adhering to its interior, from which portions of bone were picked out, and also the fang of a human molar tooth (now exhibited), which, on examination, I have no doubt is part of the first teeth, a milk molar of a child. My friend Mr William Turner, Professor of Anatomy in the University, F.S.A. Scot., has also examined the bones and tooth, and agrees witli me that they are those of a child. The milk molars of a child, I may mention, generally make their appearance in the mouth from the twelfth to the twenty-fourth month, so that here in this small urn we have evidence of the incinerated remains of a young child, being interred along with the burnt bones enclosed in the larger urn, in which the small urn was laid. The bones in the large urn were probably the remains of the mother of the child. 'From the presence of a small seam of black earth, apparently arranged in a square shape, and enclosing the large inverted urn all round, it was supposed that it might originally have been enclosed in a wooden box, of which this black substance was the decayed remains. For all the information about the discovery of tliis .small urn, and indeed the preservation of the urn itself, we are indebted to Mr William Telfer, The College, Fordel, near Inverkeithing, Fifeshire. The urn is now preserved in the local museum at Jedburgh. This urn, 1 may remind the Fellows, belongs to the class of small fictile vessels, which, for want, perhaps, of a better explanation, have been described as lamps, censers, incense cups, or thuribles. They have been generally found along with burnt bones, either enclosed in, or covered by, an urn, but in some cases they have apparently been simply laid beside the larger cinerary urn, and they have been found in cir- cumstances of a corresponding character both in Scotland, England, and Ireland. From the interest excited among antiquaries by the small size and peculiar shape of these urns, I have thought the different examples pre-