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Alloa, Mars Hill

Cist(S) (Bronze Age), Armlet(S) (Gold)(Bronze Age), Cinerary Urn(S) (Bronze Age)

Site Name Alloa, Mars Hill

Classification Cist(S) (Bronze Age), Armlet(S) (Gold)(Bronze Age), Cinerary Urn(S) (Bronze Age)

Alternative Name(s) Hawk Hill

Canmore ID 47240

Site Number NS89SE 9

NGR NS 8841 9297

NGR Description centred NS 8841 9297

Datum OSGB36 - NGR

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/site/47240

Ordnance Survey licence number AC0000807262. All rights reserved.
Canmore Disclaimer. © Copyright and database right 2024.

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Administrative Areas

  • Council Clackmannan
  • Parish Alloa
  • Former Region Central
  • Former District Clackmannan
  • Former County Clackmannanshire

Archaeology Notes ( - 1973)

NS89SE 9 8843 9297

(Name: NS 8843 9297) Stone Coffins and Urns found here (NAT)

OS 1:500 map (1866)

Two or more cists and twenty-two cinerary urns were found in March 1828 at Alloa in repairing the road on Mars Hill which forms the northern boundary of the minister's glebe area NS 884 929). According to one account the urns were inverted on pieces of flagstone. Only one of them - an overhanging rim urn is known; it is in the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland (NMAS) (EA 7). A further urn was found in 1850 (J Crawford 1874).

Two Late Bronze Age gold armlets, one of Irish and the other of Covesea type (J M Coles 1962) are said to have been found on the cover of a cist. They are in the (NMAS) (Accession nos EQ 118-9). The NSA (1845) states that they were found in a cist, and that another pair, exactly similar, were found in another cist. These were bought by a pedlar and never traced. It seems possible that the armlet said to have been found at the mouth of a fox's earth near Alloa (NS89SE 2) may have come from this site. (See also NS89SE 20).

J Anderson 1883; 1886; D Wilson 1851.

At Alloa, 22 cinerary urns were found, and among the group was a short cist containing an unburnt skeleton and two penannular gold armlets.

W Turner 1917.

No further information.

Visited by OS (DWR), 8 February 1973.

Activities

Publication Account (1933)

Bronze Age Cemetery, Shanwell House.

About the year 1884, when improvements were being carried out near Shanwell House, what seems to have been a small cremation cemetery of the Bronze Age was revealed. As is usual in most cases of similar discoveries, the site of the cemetery was a natural ridge or hillock of no great altitude. The burials brought to light as the result of the excavations yielded, in at least four cases, urns of the usual cinerary form. They appear to have been simply set in the soil and covered over, without any protecting cist. A thin oval bronze blade with incised ornament was found in association with one of the deposits. Cf. Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot., xix (1884-5), pp. 114-17.

RCAHMS 1933

Note (1978)

Mars Hill, Alloa, NS c. 884 929 NS89SE 9 and 20

At least two cists and twenty two cinerary urns were discovered in a ‘tumulus’ during road construction in 1828, and a further ‘urn’ was found in 1850. Both cremated and unburnt bone was found in the cinerary urns; the two cists contained inhumations accompanied by gold amulets of Late Bronze Age type. The surviving objects are in the National Museums of Antiquities of Scotland (NMAS nos. EA 7, EQ 118-119). It is possible that the eight or nine ‘urns’ recorded as from ‘the head of the town of Alloa’ in 1758 were found in the same area.

RCAHMS 1978

(NSA, viii, Clackmannan, 41; Anderson 1883, 447-9; 1886, 62-3; Crawford 1874, 26-8, 32-3)

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