Queenamuckle
Burial Cairn(S) (Bronze Age), Cist(S) (Bronze Age), Cremation(S) (Bronze Age), Cinerary Vessel (Steatite)(Bronze Age)
Site Name Queenamuckle
Classification Burial Cairn(S) (Bronze Age), Cist(S) (Bronze Age), Cremation(S) (Bronze Age), Cinerary Vessel (Steatite)(Bronze Age)
Canmore ID 2691
Site Number HY42SW 5
NGR HY 4192 2192
Datum OSGB36 - NGR
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/site/2691
- Council Orkney Islands
- Parish Evie And Rendall
- Former Region Orkney Islands Area
- Former District Orkney
- Former County Orkney
HY42SW 5 4192 2192
(HY 4192 2192) Site of Tumulus (OE)
Stone Cists found AD 1859.
OS 6" map, Orkney, 2nd ed., (1900).
Stone cists, containing ashes (apparently burnt bone),were found during land improvement. In the enclosure 250 links to the north are traces of two mounds about which nothing is known.
Name Book 1880.
The mound has almost entirely disappeared.
RCAHMS 1946.
The mound where the cists were found can now only be seen as a slight rise in a pasture field. There are no intelligible remains of the other two mounds. Due to coastal erosion, only a small part, on the SW side, of each can be seen. They appear to have been of large stoney content and may have been cairns.
(The other two mounds are at HY 4190 2197 and HY 4191 2196).
Visited by OS (RL) 6 June 1967.
Field Visit (18 October 1993)
This bowl-shaped mound was visited during the course of the Orkney Barrows Project. It measures 8.0m in diamter and 1.1m in height. It is not prominent, but is visible from upslope to the S.
Information from the Orkney Barrows Project (JD), 1993
Excavation (12 August 2014 - 15 August 2014)
HY 4191 2197 An excavation was undertaken, 12–15 August 2014, under the Historic Scotland human remains call-out contract, on an eroding cairn on the NE coast of mainland Orkney. Upon arrival at the site it became apparent that more than half of the cairn had already been lost to coastal erosion. Of the remaining cairn there was a central area extending nearly
a metre from the section supported by a shelf of bedrock. This spur of surviving cairn must have lain very close to the centre of the original plan of the cairn and it was here that a steatite vessel was positioned. It was surrounded by placed stones and covered with a capstone and was positioned over an area of burning and burnt material thought to relate to a funeral pyre.
The vessel was almost complete but was obviously badly damaged with numerous cracks and distortions visible. The vessel is a flat-rimmed, wide-mouthed, sub-circular tub-like vessel with steeply angled, rounded walls. After careful recording of the section the vessel was block lifted and returned to the AOC offices for conservation. No other artefacts were recovered during the excavation. Burnt bone fragments presumed to be human remains were recovered from the ‘pyre’ material.
Archive: RCAHMS (intended)
Funder: Historic Scotland
Lindsay Dunbar – AOC Archaeology Group
(Source: DES)
Note (2020)
Queenamuckle
This burial site in Orkney Islands was a focus for funerary practices in the Bronze Age period, between 2450 BC and 801 BC.
Prehistoric Grave Goods project site ID: 60189
CANMORE ID: 2691
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: 60079
Grave type: Cist
Burial type(s): Cremation
Grave good: Vessel (Unknown/Unspecified)
Materials used: Steatite
Current museum location: Unknown
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/
