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Notes on the Megalithic Monuments in the Isles of Scilly

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2012

Extract

In the years 1899, 1900, and 1901 Mr. George Bonsor, a British subject residing in Spain, visited the Scilly Isles, the archipelago of tiny granite islands 28 miles south-west of Land's End, for archaeological research. Mr. Bonsor was long a profound student of the archaeology of his adopted country and was interested in the history of the ancient tin trade. It was in this connexion that he visited the Scillies, for he wished to test the hypothesis that they were the Cassiterides, the fabled tin islands of the Atlantic. With regard to the tin trade, his researches proved entirely negative, but in the course of his visits he excavated and planned some of the numerous megalithic tombs that abound in the islands. Mr. Bonsor, however, never published an account of his work in Scilly, but kept the notes and finds at his castle at Mairena del Alcor near Seville for many years. There he was visited in 1926 by Mr. T. D. Kendrick of the Department of British and Mediaeval Antiquities at the British Museum, and through him sent a part of the finds to the Museum. At the same time the writer had become interested in the archaeology of the islands, and with the help of Mr. Kendrick was able to obtain more of the finds for the British Museum as well as plans of the more important tombs and some notes with regard to their excavation. The most important plans and an abstract of the notes the writer has included in his Archaeology of Cornwall, but space prevented the use of all of Mr. Bonsor's material. Mr. Reginald Smith, Keeper of British and Mediaeval Antiquities at the British Museum, had for a long time urged Mr. Bonsor to communicate the results of his excavations to the Society of Antiquaries, but the latter died without having done so. Subsequently Mr. Smith obtained Mr. Bonsor's plans and the full account of the excavation of the most important tomb, and these he has kindly permitted the writer to publish.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1933

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References

page 13 note 1 Pp. 17–38.

page 17 note 1 Mr. S. A. Opie of Redruth has lately reported a hitherto unnoticed stone circle on St. Agnes.

page 19 note 1 For similar walls on St. Mary's and Samson see Archaeology of Cornwall, pp. 31–2.

page 19 note 2 Scilly Islands (Sherborne, 1796), pp. 154–5.Google Scholar

page 20 note 1 Op. cit., p. 155.

page 22 note 1 The reader must judge for himself from the plan in fig. 9 a whether these bones really belonged to a contracted skeleton, or whether they were skeletal debris scattered in early times through this layer of soil.

page 23 note 1 This tiny piece of metal has lately been analysed by Dr. Plenderleith at the British Museum and proves to be bronze very poor in tin.

page 24 note 1 Archaeology of Cornwall, pp. 28–9, 78–9.

page 24 note 2 Ibid., pp. 70–1, 104.

page 25 note 1 For all references to the archaeology of the Scilly Isles see Archaeology of Cornwall, chap. ii.

page 25 note 2 For its exact position, see ibid., fig. 7.

page 27 note 1 Antiq. Journ. vii, 452. A similar one was found in Gugh 1.