Details |
Site of a barrow. During Forestry Commission road laying in 1971, the side of a tree-grown mound was bulldozed revealing several skulls and human long bones. Around a quarter of the site was excavated in 1972 by A. S. Henshall. The mound measured circa 17 m in diameter and 1.7 m high. It was found to consist of a cairn of boulders 1.3 m high capped overall by a thick layer of sand. A post had stood near the centre. The cairn was constructed on a layer of burnt material and near the centre of the mound the underlying natural sand was burned bright red. Flecks of burnt bone suggested the presence of a funeral pyre from which cremated remains were subsequently carefully removed. Throughout the cairn, and the blackened layer beneath, were chips of flint and many pottery sherds. Outside the edge of the mound, a small pit was found with the remains of at least three beakers. Altogether 265 sherds of Neolithic pottery were recovered from this first phase of excavation, as well as 23 flints and a whetstone. Excavation of the site was completed in 1974 by H. A. W. Burl. This second excavation revealed the remains of stakeholes and hearths and hollows with early Neolithic pottery and flint implements, indicating occupation, perhaps alongside a midden which was later levelled over the area creating a black layer containing many sherds of plain and fluted pottery. Over this was heaped a low barrow of sand 6 m across. At least three cairns, about 4 m in diameter and 1.3 m high, which overlapped the perimeter of the barrow, were erected to the east, north and west around a central open space. A fourth cairn to the south may have been destroyed by the widening of the forest road in 1971. A bright yellow sand capping, up to 0.5 m thick, was piled over the whole site to make a mound circa 17 m in diameter. This layer also held many Neolithic sherds, some of which fitted others from the black layer. Five graves had been dug along the crest of the mound in an east-west line, each holding a well preserved skeleton, four being extended. A sixth skeleton was discovered between the north and the east cairns on the old land surface. Although there were no grave goods, a small cremation cist at the top of the mound overlay the skull of one skeleton and provided a prehistoric terminus ante quem for it. Other isolated bones were discovered near the bodies and may be associated with the skeletal remains removed in 1971 to Aberdeen Museum, by Prof. Lockhart, following the site's discovery. A central pit 0.7 m deep, large enough for a primary inhumation, held only layers of dirty sand and two rim sherds of fine Western Neolithic ware. The pottery from this mound is analogous with that found at Easterton of Roseisle. Many carbonized cereal grains, seeds and hazel nut shells recovered from the site.
|