The sepulchres of our early Caledonian forefathers, from which such articles as we have enumerated have been recovered, indicate two different modes of burial in early times for persons of rank. The common mode probably did not differ from that of the present day, but the bodies of their chiefs were for the most part consigned to their last resting-place under circumstances of pomp and ceremony, in some cases under great cairns of stones or tumuli, and at other times under immense mounds of earth and barrows. The cairns or tumuli are the largest and most numerous of the Scottish sepulchral mounds; many of them containing chambers regularly built, and of considerable size.
These, in many cases, reveal evidence of the practice of cremation, a common, but by no means universal practice in those early ages. Sometimes the body was burned, and the ashes and bones placed in clay urns which were again deposited in stone cists, but frequently the body was simply interred within the stone cist or coffin, and the probability is that it was only the bodies of such persons as occupied a leading place in the tribe who were dignified with such burial. The rank and file of the common people are more than likely to have been interred without any such formalities; and, of course, all trace of their remains have long since disappeared.
In the parish of Duddingston the bronze period has left some traces of its burial customs, preserved to us by these stone cists and clay urns. In 1881, while workmen were excavating a piece of ground lying between Magdalene Bridge and Eastfield Cottages, on the north side of the high road from Edinburgh to Musselburgh, they discovered a large, cinerary urn filled with calcined human bones; this led to the discovery of other six urns all enclosed in stone cists, varying in size from 1012 to 16 inches high, and to the circumstance that some had covering stones and others had not. All the urns contained calcined bones. In one, the bones showed traces of the green stain characteristic of contact with bronze, but only the merest fragment of an implement was found. In another urn, however, was found a small oval bronze blade, which is now in the Antiquarian Museum. Besides these urns there were also discovered a stone cist with a male skeleton in a fine state of preservation, but without any object along with it except a small chip of flint; a stone cist quite empty, another small cist with a small urn three or four inches
