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Quartz: King of pebbles
The walker and writer Linda Cracknell is drawn to the luminosity of the quartz she finds on Ben Lawers near Loch Tay. The appeal of this crystalline mineral goes back thousands of years: dozens of ancient decorated quartz pebbles have been found around Scotland, many of them in Orkney and Shetland, some dating as far back to the first century AD.
Smooth and comforting to hold, were these pale, luminescent stones charms of some sort? Were they used as gifts, currency, for healing, or as slingshots? Or were they perhaps part of a long-forgotten game?
Image shows a quartzite pebble from the West Coast region of New Zealand's South Island.
