Publication Account

Date 1985

Event ID 1018901

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Publication Account

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1018901

RCAHMS: Exploring Scotland's Heritage - Argyll and the Western Isles, 1985

This cairn was probably the oldest of the series of burial sites that fonn the linear cemetery at Kilmartin; it contained a well-preserved chamber of Clyde type, the customary tomb-architecture of the neolithic inhabitants of Argyll, as well as two individual cists, only one of which is still visible. The chamber is now at the centre of a large cairn measuring about 40m in overall diameter, but it is likely that the final shape of the cairn owes more to its reconstruction when the bronze-age cists were added than to the original intentions of the neolithic builders. The cairn was most probably trapezoidal with the straight sides now masked by the addition of further stones. The chamber is oblong on plan, measuring 6m in length and up to 1.2m in width, and is divided by transverse slabs into four compartments. The massive slabs of the eastern side of the chamber, supplemented by drystone walling, appear to be original; the western side is at least in part reconstructed. The slabs of the roof may also have been replaced. There are two transverse slabs at the entrance as well as a pair of blocking stones. Entry is now made by going across the cairn and then dropping down over these blocking slabs; but when the tomb was in use there would probably have been no cairn material in front of the tomb and there may have been an impressive facade or forecourt fonned by upright slabs leading straight into the chamber.

It is known from excavations carried out by Canon Greenwell in 1864 that the floor level of the chamber was about 0.6m below the present layer of gravel, and that the transverse slabs would thus have been a much more dominant feature of the interior of the tomb.

The innennost pair of compartments was found to be paved with small pebbles, which were covered with an earthy layer containing cremated bone, a round-based neolithic vessel and quartz chips; in the inner compartment there was a small cist above the earthy layer. The cist itself was empty, but the excavator found parts of several Beakers, and inhumation burials were found nearby. In the other compartments there was only stone and rubble.

Of the two cists, both of which had been found before Greenwell's excavation, only that to the south-west of the chamber can still be seen, but nothing is known about its original contents. On the north side of the chamber there was a second cist which contained a fine Food Vessel, but there appears to have been no trace of any burial remains. It is suggested that the shape of the cairn was changed as a result of the addition of these two cist burials over a thousand years after the building of the chamber.

The finds from the excavation are in the British Museum, London.

Information from ‘Exploring Scotland’s Heritage: Argyll and the Western Isles’, (1985).