Archaeology Notes

Event ID 784136

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/784136

HY50NE 5 571 060.

A short cist containing calcined bones and a steatite urn, 8ins. high was ploughed up in 1929 near the crest of a mound known as Howan Blo (near which another cist had been found some years before) on the farm of Blowes, about 100 yds. S of the former Free Church of Deerness.

In 1933, a few feet away, a Bronze Age cinerary urn containing bone-ash and potsherds was found (not of an incense cup) and, 5ft. away a third cremation burial with out either urn or cist.

The pottery and the steatite urn are in Kirkwall Museum.

H Marwick and A Low 1929; H Marwick 1929; W G Grant 1933; RCAHMS 1946.

'Howan Blo' is a natural hillock centred in an arable field at HY 571 060. No trace of any burials or excavations are evident. The pottery and steatite urn were not seen: the contents of Kirkwall Museum are at present in store.

Visited by OS (RD) 1 September 1964.

There is nothing to mark the exact spot where three Bronze Age burials were found close together in 1929 and 1933. The initial discovery, made during ploughing, was of a small cist containing a pottery cinerary urn, two-thirds full of burned bones, and containing sherds of a small urn, was discovered. In the course of its removal, the excavators came across a third cremation, in this case in an urn-shaped hole, but without an actual urn. The cist and bones were re-buried, the urns are in Tankerness House Museum.

H Marwick 1929; W G Grant 1933; RCAHMS 1946; RCAHMS 1987.