Archaeology Notes

Event ID 645540

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/645540

HY50NW 15 unlocated.

George Petrie records the discovery of four cists, three of them in barrows, in the parish of St. Andrews, without locating them more accurately, though he mentions that one (C.below) was found "near Kirkwall and within a couple of miles of ... (A and B)"

A. About March 1850 a barrow, about 15ft diameter and 4 1/2ft. high was opened. In its centre was a short cist containing an urn, 13ins. high and 10ins. wide at its mouth, three fourths full of burnt bones and ashes. It stood in the centre of the cist, in a quantity of fine dry clay heaped about halfway up the outside. At the NW end of the cist was a rude stone implement deposited in the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland (NMAS) some years before 1867.

A sketch by Petrie, preserved in the Library of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, shows that the barrow was of clay. Bronze Age (RCAHMS 1946).

B. Petrie opened a barrow, 22ft diameter and about 2ft high, in March 1850. In its centre was a short cist containing burnt bones and ashes covered with clay. Outside the cist, close to its NNE end, lay a rude stone implement which seemed to have been used as a whststone.

C. A similar relationship of a "so-called corn- crusher, rubber, or stone pestle" with the end of a cist in a barrow near Kirkwall was found by Petrie. The pestle, with the whetstone (from B) were exhibited in 1859 to the British Association at Aberdeen.

D. Petrie records the recent possession of a bone axe, or hammer, with a square hole cut in it for a handle. It lay on the cover stone of a cist containing burnt bones, and was covered by a flagstone of the same size as the cover of the cist in which it lay.

G Petrie 1870; RCAHMS 1946.

No further information could be obtained about these barrows and cists. 'C' may possibly be referred to in Orkney 108 NE 24.

Visited by OS (RD) 12 April 1964.