The Modern Antiquarian. Stone Circles, Ancient Sites, Neolithic Monuments, Ancient Monuments, Prehistoric Sites, Megalithic MysteriesThe Modern Antiquarian

Bookan

Chambered Cairn

Miscellaneous

RCAHMS NMRS record no. HY21SE 10 has been explored three times, the first time an unknown or unknowns dug into the upper section. Petrie excavated in 1861 what he decribed a bowl-barrow some 44'D and 6' high overlaying a circular building. A central cist 7'1" x4' x2'8", in which he found only a flint lance/spearhead and fragments of three or more small clay vessels, was connected to the outside wall by a 6¼' passage 1¾' in cross-section to the encircling wall eleven feet from the cairn's base. This cist had four cists about it, all on the order of 4'8" x2'9" x2'8", one each to the north and east and two on the west side with three of these containing the remains of robust skeletons. Excavations ending in 2002, which managed to recover more such in one of what are now seen as side-chambers, found that Petrie's circular building was later (either after natural erosion or deliberate damage) surrounded by a ~16m cairn itself bounded by three revetments. We cannot know in what condition the original digger found it but only the other day I read that Shennar Howe not that far away consists of a flat-topped mound on which there is placed a smaller one, both of similar heights and totalling roughly six foot high. wideford Posted by wideford
5th December 2005ce
Edited 14th April 2010ce

Comments (1)

Have read the PSAS article on the last excavation. As regards the original morphology a fine set of special pleadings mars the attempt. The archaeological context ignores sites on the hill above [e.g. the nearby cairns about the quarry and the Ring of Bookan] in favour of the valley below wideford Posted by wideford
20th January 2010ce
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