Archaeology Notes

Event ID 643563

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/643563

HY31SW 15 3474 1046.

(Group of five centred: HY 3474 1046) Graves (NR)

OS 6" map, Orkney, 2nd ed., (1903).

Eleven mounds, said to be the graves of men killed in the Battle of Summers Dale (HY31SW 14) in 1529.

The mounds may be earlier as two of them show possible cist slabs.

The mounds are from 12 to 34ft in diameter and not more than 3ft in height. Nearly all show traces of having been examined.

RCAHMS 1946.

Only seven grass and heather covered mounds of earth and stone are visible on a ridge, partly cultivated, partly moorland, at about 185ft OD, varying from 4.0 to 11.0m in diameter and 0.2 to 1.6m in height.

No cist-like constructions are visible, but the most southerly mound has a deep depression in its centre.

Their shape, size and topographical position suggest that they are probably tumuli.

Resurveyed at 1/2500.

Visited by OS (NKB) 11 May 1966.

One of the 10 or 12 mounds ('the most southerly mound', recorded by the OS surveyor NKB), was excavated by Wainwright in 1960 and found to contain a short cist 2 to 2 1/2ft long and about 10 ins high. There was a scatter of calcined bones, within a radius of about 5ft, immediately above the top of the cist. This scatter lay above a layer of slabs beneath which were parts of an inhumation (skull, jaw, etc.) and more cremated bone. This layer, in turn, lay above a second layer of slabs, beneath which was the cist proper. The top half of the cist contained the incomplete remains of a skeleton, disarticulated before burial, with soil and cremated bone, and at the bottom of the cist was a layer of red and black burnt earth and calcined bones. The cist had been built on the original ground level and, to one side, there was another slab of stone, above and below which were more burnt bones.

The site, a round barrow, was filled in on the completion of the excavation.

Orkney Survey 1960 Wainwright Ms, notes etc. in possession of Ministry of Public Buildings and Works (HBM).