Mundurno

RCAHMS surveyed Mundurno standing stone on 24 May 1999 with plane table and alidade producing a plan and elevation of the stone at a scale of 1:100. The plan and elevation were used as the basis for an illustration, produced in ink and finished in vector graphics software, that was published at a scale of 1:250 (Welfare 2011, 532).

A single stone standing 420m west-north-west of Mundurno is probably the sole survivor of a stone circle that was removed when the surrounding field was improved in the mid 19th century. Unfortunately the stone fell in 1993 and has been re-erected (Barclay and Miles 1993). Its original orientation is not recorded in any published source and it now stands with its long axis north and south, measuring about 1.3m by 0.45m at ground level and rising asymmetrically to a point at a height of 1.85m. In 1864–7 the OS surveyors noted that when the whins were cleared ‘it was found that besides this stone there were 6 or 7 more nearly the same size lying beside it and that they formed a circle’ (Name Book, Aberdeenshire, No. 69, p 17). Coles did not have access to their description, but he was well aware that there had been a circle here (1904, 303, 305). It fell to Alexander Keiller to make the suggestion that the stone had been a flanker in a recumbent setting (1934, 20–1) and it has appeared as a possible recumbent stone circle in Burl’s lists (1970, 78; 1976a, 352, Abn 78; 2000, 421, Abn 81). Ruggles and Barnatt have been more sceptical (Ruggles 1984, 60; 1999, 188 no. 82, 266 note 20; Barnatt 1989, 463, no. 6:145), a view with which the present survey concurs. There is no doubt that Keiller was right that the asymmetric shape of the stone was appropriate for a flanker, but if its present axis faithfully reproduces its original alignment, this would place it on the east or west side of the circle and thus outside the typical range of positions for a recumbent setting.