Publication Account

Date 1996

Event ID 1016526

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Publication Account

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1016526

A recumbent stone circle, 20.5 m in diameter, of eight stand ing stones, two flankers and a massive, frostsplit recumbent, crouching on a broad shelf at 155m OD, near the summit of a gentle hill. The stones of the circle are graded in height and the one immediately east of the east flanker has a vertical line of five cup- marks on its inner face (another seven have been claimed on this stone). Each stone stood in a little cairn, beneath which was a pit containing charcoal and pottery shreds. The central ring cairn, with its prominent kerb, occupies most of the interior of the circle. It overlay traces of burning which, in the central space, included sherds, charcoal, human cremated bone (chi ldren's skull fragments and adult bones) and retouched flint flakes. It is possible that a small rectangular timber mortuary house (1.2m by 0.6m) was represented by four shallow holes in the very middle of the central space. An arc of kerbing reserves a space in front of the 12-ton recumbent, which is skewed into the circle. From the pottery found here it is likely that the use of the circle extended over many centuries and that it fell out of use during the beaker period (c 2000 BC).

The two arcs of low stone walling, with entrances at the west and east, that lie immediately southeast of the circle comprise an enclosed cremation cemetery of the bronze age. Excavation in 1935 revealed a burial in a shallow central scoop, consisting of the partially incinerated remains of a 40 year-old man. The pyre had been placed over the body and, unusually, the partially cremated remains had not been gathered up but rather the area had been used for subsequent cremations. An adjacent, empty, pit may have been used for the storage of bodies before cremation. To the northeast and south more burial deposits were found, 11 in urns and the rest in pits.

Whereas the great stone circle had required the cooperation of a whole community (and their neighbours) to build it, and wh ile its use for the rituals of life, fertility and magic extended over many centuries, the cremation cemetery is an altogether slighter, more transient creation, concerned with the relationships in death within an individual family or two over a short time.

Information from ‘Exploring Scotland’s Heritage: Aberdeen and North-East Scotland’, (1996).