Achinduich

NC50SE 98 581 006

Prehistoric kerbed burial mound, NC 581 006. In 1988, the survey first identified this site as large indeterminate mound. In 1989, two small assemblages of burnt bone were recovered from an abandoned quarry section, which had cut into the mound. A massive boulder within the quarry suggested the continuation of a kerb of large stones which was visible on the E side. If correct it seems that c15% of the mound had been removed by the quarry.

Excavation revealed an almost soil-free cairn, retained by a slightly eliptical kerb of upright boulders, 9m along the Sw-NW axis and an estimated c8m along the SE-NW axis. The kerb stones were slightly graded in size with those on the N side being smaller, these northern stones had also been displaced.

The cairn consisted of angular rocks typical of the numerous field clearance cairns in the vicinity. The composition of the cairn suggested that it had been very much disturbed. On the S side, at the base, a lidless and damaged cist was recovered, from the N side a fragment of Beaker pottery was found.

In the surface of the soil beneath the cairn, a tanged and barbed arrowhead (close to the findspot of the Beaker sherd) and four discrete collections of burnt bone were discovered. A total of thirteen small pits were cut through this surface. The largest pit contained a crushed, but virtually complete pot; from an examination of its uncleaned form it is probably best defined as a Food Vessel. It contained nine small pierced shale discs.

The soil beneath the cairn had been enriched with abundant charcoal, flint waste flakes and small sherds of pottery. It is thought possible that the cairn overlay a domestic or midden context.

It seems likely this burial monument is broadly contemporary with the main site type in the area; large hut circles of the sort excavated at Allt na Fearna quarry (NC50SE 46). Good examples of such sites are present some 50m to the N of the cairn.

R McCullagh 1991.