Cartomie Wood

Cartomie Wood NH 710 853 NH78NW

A group of about thirty small cairns, which measure up to 3.5m in diameter and 0.5m in height, is visible 300m E of Balblair distillery and immediately N of the railway.

RCAHMS1979, visited November 1977

NH 7100 8530 An evaluation of an area N of Edderton village,

in advance of the construction of a new road, concluded that

it would pass through and destroy a section of the cairn

field known as Cartomie Cairns. An earthwork, visible on

air photographs proved to be a system of trenches probably

dating to WW1, which had been excavated for trench warfare

exercises. The route of the road was adjusted to avoid damage

to this feature.

Two of the cairns/mounds along the route of the road

were investigated on 19–20 January 2010. The sondage

revealed that that the cairns were constructed of subsoil,

with very little stone content. This evidence disproved

the theory that these were field clearance piles, while not

clarifying the function of the mounds. Neither mound

contained any cist or other structure. Both appeared to have

been cut through during deep ploughing for 19th-century

afforestation. Most interesting was the sub-mound ground

surface, which produced a scatter of small pottery fragments

and unworked flint flakes. These may have been associated

with the construction of the mounds, or may represent a

general scatter over the whole area. A watching brief during

ground clearance recorded similar results for the six further

mounds that were either partially or fully removed during

the construction of the road. The two low linear banks, with

a 1m wide spread, which appeared to define the NW and SE

edges of the cairn field, also consisted of subsoil with low

rubble content.

Archive: Highland Council Archaeology Unit