RCAHMS Special Survey, Neolithic Monuments in the Uists and Benbecula

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Date 2010

Event ID 1107626

Category Project

Type Project

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1107626

2010 RCAHMS Special Survey

A thematic review of Neolithic monuments in The Uists and Benbecula was carried out over two week-long trips in March and September 2010. In all, thirty-three chambered cairns were visited, together with eight standing stones, five stone circles and two stone rows. An updated description for each site is available to the public through Canmore. Of the ‘chambered cairns’, two are new discoveries, while seven have been reinterpreted, most of them as large buildings, and will be reclassified accordingly.

RCAHMS (DES 2010, 196)

People and Organisations

Related Event(s)

Event	Type	Subtype	Notes	Date
629391	RECORDING	FIELD VISIT	This chambered cairn is as described and planned by Henshall. There are several shallow scoops quarried into the sides of the cairn, possibly to create small shelters, and the stones of the peristalith are large slabs measuring up to 1.7m in length and 1.4m in height. Drill holes were observed on at least one of these slabs on the NW arc, and likewise on one of the passage roof slabs located towards the centre of the cairn. [...]	3 March 2010
629349	RECORDING	FIELD VISIT	What may be the remains of a stone circle measuring about 24m in diameter stand on a low knoll in an area of pasture; there are faint traces of the furrows of cultivation rigs extending from N to S through the interior. The only stone remaining upright is on the E, standing in a slight hollow with several loose stones gathered around its foot. It is a cleaved slab with its flatter WNW side facing into the interior and measures 0.8m in breadth by 0.18m in thickness at the base, but expands to 1.15m in breadth at a point about 1m above the ground, before narrowing to a rounded top at a height of 1.4m. Clockwise from this position, several stones lie prostrate and displaced: one small slab 1.4m long lies 7m to the SSW; two stones lie 14m to the WSW, both 1.7m long; another lies 12m to the NW and is 2.1m long and 1.4m broad; a lump of outcrop is visible 16m to NNW; and 13.5m to the N, there is a slab 1.2m square and 0.4m thick. Further outcrops and smaller stones can be seen around the knoll to the W. [...]	2 March 2010
629886	RECORDING	FIELD VISIT	This chambered cairn is as described and planned by Henshall and is protected as a scheduled ancient monument. It is an impressive mound of grey stones, standing on the hillside looking NW across Loch a’ Bharpa. A peristalith of spaced slabs defines its perimeter, but this lies some way out from the steep flanks of the mound covering the chamber, suggesting that a certain amount of disturbance and reconstruction has taken place, so much so that the capstones are buried beneath a far greater depth of cairn material than has been observed elsewhere. The passage approaches the chamber from the E and has evidently undergone some reconstruction at its inner end, work that possibly also includes the coursed masonry forming its N wall. The cairn gives the appearance of standing in a shallow hollow, but this seems to be the result of differential peat growth, which has not encroached upon the better-drained matrix of the cairn material. [...]	5 March 2010

RCAHMS Special Survey, Neolithic Monuments in the Uists and Benbecula

People and Organisations

Related Event(s)

References