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Nether Largie

Cup Marked Rock (Prehistoric)

Site Name Nether Largie

Classification Cup Marked Rock (Prehistoric)

Alternative Name(s) Nether Largie North

Canmore ID 39472

Site Number NR89NW 30

NGR NR 8305 9847

Datum OSGB36 - NGR

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/site/39472

Ordnance Survey licence number AC0000807262. All rights reserved.
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Administrative Areas

  • Council Argyll And Bute
  • Parish Kilmartin
  • Former Region Strathclyde
  • Former District Argyll And Bute
  • Former County Argyll

Archaeology Notes ( - 1977)

NR89NW 30 8305 9847.

(NR 830 985) A smooth rockface, sloping NE measuring 28" x 21" is sculptured with 13 cup-marks, 1 1/2" - 3" in diameter and under 1/2" deep. It is situated at the foot of a bank, behind a dyke by a footpath leading to cairn NR89NW 4 and NR89NW 43 yds W of the cist in that cairn.

J H Craw 1931; M Campbell and M Sandeman 1964.

NR 8305 9848 As described.

Surveyed at 1/2500

Visited by OS (I A) 26 April 1973.

No change to previous field report.

Surveyed at 1/2500.

Visited by OS (T R G) 14 February 1977.

Activities

Field Visit (May 1983)

This group of thirteen plain cupmarks is situated on a gently sloping rock outcrop, which lies immediately W of a field wall opposite the entrance pathway to Nether Largie North cairn (NR89NW 4). For the most part they measure 40mm in diameter by 10mm in depth, but there is also an oval cup, which is 95mm by 80mm and 20mm deep (Craw 1931; Campbell and Sandeman 1964).

Visited May 1983

RCAHMS 1988

Publication Account (1985)

Nether Largie Mid Cairn is both ruinous and unhelpfully displayed; it is about 30m in diameter within a kerb of big stones, but excavation-debris masks much of the perimeter. Two cists were found when the cairn was excavated in 1929. That on the north, its position now indicated by four concrete posts, was empty; its side-slabs had carefully grooved slots into which the end-slabs had been placed. The southern cist is still visible, its capstone supported on steel bars to allow the interior to be seen, but it too was empty when excavated. There is a single cup-mark and axe-marking on its north-west end-slab.

Nether Largie North cairn is an impressive, though largely reconstructed, bowl-shaped mound about 20m in diameter and 3m in height; a cist at its centre is approached through a hatch with steps down into a viewing chamber. The cist is 1.6m by 0.65m and about 0.6m deep, but, when excavated in 1930, only one tooth, a few fragments of charcoal and a little ochre were found. What is remarkable about the cist, however, is that two of the slabs have been carefully decorated: one end-slab has representations of two distinctive axe-heads, while on the underside of the capstone there are at least ten axe-heads and about forty cup-markingsi it is likely that the cup-markings were the earliest decoration on the slab, for some of them seem to have been made shallower by the carving of the axes.

Information from ‘Exploring Scotland’s Heritage: Argyll and the Western Isles’, (1985).

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