Court Hillock, a cairn measuring about 18.0m in diameter and 0.8 m height, is situated in a cultivated field, and spread by ploughing. The farmer at Upper Auchenreath reports that the mound is nearly all stones, a quantity of which he has removed in recent years.
Surveyed at 1:2500.
Visited by OS (R L) 13 May 1971.
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Refers to the standing stones as Clune Hill / Pittenbrinzean
Achnacreebeag, near Oban, is a wonderful early Neolithic funerary monument with a great story to tell.
This lecture explores its history and origins, setting out how a Breton-style monument with Breton-style pottery came to be built on the west coast of Scotland around 6,000 years ago – and how it is part of a widespread group of similar monuments along Britain’s west coast and around the coast of Ireland. The lecture describes an exciting current research project, funded by the Audrey Henshall Legacy Fund of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland and undertaken by Archaeology Scotland – Scotland’s Earliest Megalithic Monuments – that places Achnacreebeag in its broader international context and raises awareness of this fascinating period in our past.
About the Speaker: Dr Alison Sheridan is Vice-President of Archaeology Scotland and emerita Principal Curator of Early Prehistory (now Research Associate) at National Museums Scotland. She is a prehistorian, specialising in the Neolithic (New Stone Age) of Britain and Ireland in its broader International context. She has previously lectured in Oban, with osteologist Dr Angela Boyle, about the People of the Oban Caves.
Supported by the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland’s Audrey Henshall Legacy Award.
ProcSocAntiqScot, 114 (1984)
Interesting that the excavations were in the 1970s and found ten skeletons, after a schoolgirl walking her dog spotted a skull
The Prehistory Guys have done two recent podcasts about this tomb on their patreon and maybe they will get released on their youtube later, not sure. Anyway it’s very interesting stuff – this is the free to read academic paper the Guys and El Pais are discussing -science.org/doi/pdf/10.1126/sciadv.adp1295
1968: completely destroyed about twenty years ago
NJ94SE0022 – SKELMUIR HILL – Site of three standing stones which were probably part of a stone circle. They were removed before 1904. No further information.
Remains of a Clava type cairn. Five stones remain, being part of an outer circle of monoliths, consisting of three that are standing and two fallen, which would have formed a circle just over 30 m in diameter. The northwest stone shows signs of splitting. One of the fallen stones to the northeast bears a number of cup-marks. Only a slight ground disturbance indicates the cairn and it cannot be ascertained whether it has been a passage grave or a ring cairn. It is depicted on the OS 1st and 2nd edition maps as remains of a stone circle. The cup-marked stone was visited in July 2021 by Scotland’s Rock Art Project, but the panel could not be viewed as covered by deep turf, which was not removed.
A prominent conical mound, formerly thought to be a motte, but which excavation showed to be much earlier, a defended site dating possibly to the Bronze Age, also to the 1st century AD. There appears to have been no medieval occupation of the site. This artificial mound is located at the south end of Seaton Park, Old Aberdeen....
“In 1760 the broch measured 30’ internally, with walls 12 1/2’ thick at base and battered externally, surviving to 15’ in height. ”
It’s a featured article
[Open access] This volume presents the result of three excavations and two field walking surveys in Aberdeenshire. They were intended to shed new light on the character, chronology and structural development of the distinctive recumbent stone circles which are such a feature of north-east Scotland. Although the monuments share certain elements with other traditions of prehistoric architecture, and, in particular, with the Clava Cairns of the inner Moray Firth, no excavations at these sites had been published since the 1930s and their wider contexts had not been investigated by field survey. The new project took advantage of techniques which had not been used before, including pollen analysis and soil micromorphology, in an attempt to interpret these monuments in their wider chronological and geographical contexts. In that respect this work was the sequel to an earlier investigation of the Clava Cairns.
PDF link for a pamphlet made by Aberdeenshire Council in 2022.
Key:
Pink = Recumbent Stone Circle
Blue = Four-poster or similar
Green = Ring Cairn
Black = Destroyed (no trace remains)
With links to Wikipedia articles via en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recumbent_stone_circles
View of stones from the north east. Original negative captioned ‘Frendraught Stone Circle Remains from the North East June 1915’.
Excavations at the findspot of the Deskford carnyx, a major piece of Iron Age decorated metalwork found in a bog in the early nineteenth century, revealed a special location with a long history. Early Neolithic activity on the adjacent ridge consisted of massive postholes and pits, suggesting a ceremonial site. An Early Bronze Age cremation became the focus for a feasting event in the Middle Bronze Age. Around this time, peat began to form in the valley, with vessels of pot and wood smashed and deposited there; these activities on ridge and bog may be connected. Activity in the bog intensified in the later Iron Age, when offerings included quartz pebbles, the dismantled carnyx head, and two unusual animal bone deposits. The ridge was cut off at this period by a complex enclosure system. This Iron Age activity is interpreted as communal rituals at a time of increasing social tension. The site’s significance in this period may stem from its unusual landscape character, with flowing water to one side and a bog to the other. The area saw occasional activity in the Early Medieval period, but its significance had waned.
Abstract
Geological research reveals that Stonehenge’s stones come from sources beyond Salisbury Plain, as recently demonstrated by the Altar Stone’s origins in northern Scotland more than 700 km away. Even Stonehenge’s huge sarsen stones come from 24 km to the north, while the bluestones can be sourced to the region of the Preseli Hills some 225 km away in west Wales. The six-tonne Altar Stone is of Old Red Sandstone from the Orcadian Basin, an area that extends from the Northern Isles of Orkney and Shetland to Inverness and eastwards to Banff, Turriff and Rhynie. Its geochemical composition does not match that of rocks in the Northern Isles, so it can be identified as coming from the Scottish mainland. Its position at Stonehenge as a recumbent stone within the southwest arc of the monument, at the foot of the two tallest uprights of the Great Trilithon, recalls the plans of recumbent stone circles of north-east Scotland. Unusually strong similarities in house floor layouts between Late Neolithic houses in Orkney and the Durrington Walls settlement near Stonehenge also provide evidence of close connections between Salisbury Plain and northern Scotland. Such connections may be best explained through Stonehenge’s construction as a monument of island-wide unification, embodied in part through the distant and diverse origins of its stones.
A long blogpost by David C. Weinczok for National Museums Scotland about Kilmartin Glen