tiompan

This cairn , like so many of the chambered cairns in this area is low lying and close to the present road(s) /obvious route avoiding the bog and hills , which with the exception of Ben More Assynt are not very high but nevertheless impressive .

Yesterday turned out a good day for new finds .I wouldn’t normally post pics of single cup marks but there were three different rocks with almost basin sized cups within a 150 m of each other .Then a bit further on it was much smaller cups than usual . One pic of a find from a couple of years ago too.

Despite a common assumption prominent hill tops and clefts are not usually the points where important astronomical events are seen from the perspective of prehistoric monuments .So it was a bit of a surprise to find that the most obvious hill top and cleft (marked with black dots ) as seen from this site turned out be to very close to the major standstill (the cleft ) and summer solstice sun set (hill top ). Coincidence ? I believe so , I’m far from convinced about the site being a four poster or prehistoric . Over the hill is a “heavily cup marked boulder ” , according to Canmore .canmore.rcahms.gov.uk/en/site/263767/details/dun+muir/
But it’s just a conglomerate boulder with “pebble drop” .

Decided to check on some finds from a few years ago that were photograpehd and recorded in quite dull light, as today was a bit brighter maybe some more motifs would be evident .One thing was immediately apparent was that digger had been in the area ripping up some knolls for rock .Did find some new motifs but at one site I thought I was hallucinating , about 15 metres away was what looked like a kerb stone from an Irish passage grave ,I had spent much of the last week immersed in the stuff or maybe it was the Sally Army bass drum heard earlier (repetitive drumming ) or getting up half an hour earlier (sleep deprivation ) mushrooms from last night (not even shitake never mind anything else ) by the time I got there it was obviously real , maybe the engraver was a 21st C tipper driver high on red bull but if not it’s a bit special .

Audrey Henshall believed the two stones , there is also a recumbent third , to be a portal and the first stone of a side chamber of a chambered cairn .

The first image is from the official web site relating to the dig and has been taken from an oblique angle distorting the image and requiring the engraver to have had 2m long arms to get near the motifs .The second is mine taken directly above the motifs .Why were no pics taken from the obvious position and shown on the web site .?

Some fine previously unrecorded finds from today .
first or last pic, depending on how you look at it is good example of bad light not showing up eight cup marks three of which have rings .The next pic is the same rock surface in decent light .