Glenshee

NJ44SW 4 4496 4233

See also NJ44SW 5 and NJ44SW 6.

(NJ 4496 4233) Cairn (NR) (site of)

OS 1:10,560 map [no date available].

The site of a large cairn of stone and earth in which a cist containing human remains was found on its removal for building in 1860, Local authorities in 1871 remembered it as being similar to the neighbouring cairns (NJ44SW 5 and NJ44SW 6 NJ44SE 11).

Name Book 1871.

A beaker, which was preserved in the Brander Library, Huntly in 1906, came from one of the cairns at Cairnmore - ie this cairn or NJ44SW 5

and 6 or NJ44SE 11 which had been'partially explored' some years before. It was broken in removing it from the cairn.

F R Coles 1906.

No trace, in an arable field. There is no knowledge of the beaker at Huntly.

Visited by OS (ISS) 29 November 1972.

The beaker referred to by Coles (1906) was rediscovered in the Brander Library, Huntly in 1979 in a box containing human long bones, fragments of skull, teeth and 3 flint flakes. The handwritten label reads 'Urns and flints found with skeletons in stone coffins at Cairnmore, Glass. More than a thousand years old'. (Information from I A G Shepherd, Regional Archaeologist).

Although it is not possible to say conclusively that the beaker and other finds came from this cairn, it appears the most likely on the basis of the available evidence. The Name Book states that the other three cairns at Cairnmore were 'undisturbed' (although NJ44SW 5 had already been clipped by an enclosure) but it is surprising that the beaker is not referred to as the ONB was written c.10 years after its discovery.

Information from RCAHMS (CAA) 26 April 1991.