Publication Account
Date 1996
Event ID 1016367
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1016367
The Ward of Redland is a conspicuous hill, about 200m high, and it is noticeable that the barrowbuilders had no interest in height or maximum visibility, for the mounds are ranged in two rows along the foot of the hill. There are eleven earthen mounds, the largest of which is situated closest to the farm of Netherhouse and is about 18m in diameter and 3m high; it covered a cist, excavated in 1858, which contained cremated bones and a stone slab on which lay four gold discs and 21 amber beads and pendants (these are all in NMS). The thin gold discs are thought to have been covers for buttons, and the technique used in their decoration links them with goldwork produced in southern England; the gold sheeting has been hammered on a wooden mound to produce concentric circles of relief decoration. Analysis of the gold itself suggests a Scottish origin, however,and they may have been the creation of a goldsmith trained in southern England but working in Scotland. The amber was probably imported from the Baltic, but again via some English source, because these particular shapes of bead belong to a type of necklace that was made in amber in southern England but in jet normally in Scotland. These finds belong to a context in the early 2nd millennium BC, and they suggest not only that this was the first barrow of the group to be raised but also that it commemorates someone of wealth and high social status.
Information from ‘Exploring Scotland’s Heritage: Orkney’, (1996).
