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Balfour

Barrow (Bronze Age)(Possible), Cist (Bronze Age), Cremation (Bronze Age), Cinerary Urn (Steatite)(Bronze Age)

Site Name Balfour

Classification Barrow (Bronze Age)(Possible), Cist (Bronze Age), Cremation (Bronze Age), Cinerary Urn (Steatite)(Bronze Age)

Canmore ID 2419

Site Number HY41NE 9

NGR HY 479 165

Datum OSGB36 - NGR

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/site/2419

Ordnance Survey licence number AC0000807262. All rights reserved.
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Digital Images

Administrative Areas

  • Council Orkney Islands
  • Parish Shapinsay
  • Former Region Orkney Islands Area
  • Former District Orkney
  • Former County Orkney

Archaeology Notes

HY41NE 9 479 165.

The site of a mound found in 1881, is in the road over a sandy hill, a mile NE of Balfour Village, and then the mound was so slight that it was not observed until a fragment of an urn was turned up. Then a small cist was found with a stone bottom and a cover-stone. The urn, now in the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland (NMAS), was of steatite 6 1/2" diameter and 4" high, and had been broken and mended by piercing holes in both sides of the fractures.

RCAHMS 1946. Visited 1928; Proc Soc Antiq Scot 1882 (Donations).

No further information.

Visited by OS(AA) 30 September 1972

In 1881 workmen making the road across a sandy hilltop, about 1 mile (1.61km) NE of Balfour village, disturbed an insignificant-looking mound and discovered a small slab-formed cist containing a steatite urn (Royal Museum of Scotland accession no. EK8).

RCAHMS 1987; NMAS Catalogue 1892

Activities

Note (2020)

Balfour

This burial site in Orkney Islands was a focus for funerary practices in the Bronze Age period, between 1850 BC and 1201 BC.

Prehistoric Grave Goods project site ID: 60190

CANMORE ID: 2419

Total no. graves with grave goods: 1

Total no. people with grave goods: 1

Total no. grave goods: 1

Prehistoric Grave Goods project Grave ID: 60080

Grave type: Cist

Burial type(s): Cremation

Grave good: Vessel (Unknown/Unspecified)

Materials used: Steatite

Current museum location: National Museum of Scotland

Museum accession no.: X.EK 8

Further details, the full project database and downloads of project publications can be found here: https://doi.org/10.5284/1052206

An accessible visualisation of the database can be found here: http://blogs.reading.ac.uk/grave-goods/map/

References

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