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Latitude: 55.1655 / 55°9'55"N
Longitude: -3.6416 / 3°38'29"W
OS Eastings: 295521
OS Northings: 586922
OS Grid: NX955869
Mapcode National: GBR 380Q.D3
Mapcode Global: WH5W4.1F5C
Entry Name: Shaw's Moor,cairnfield and ring-cairn S of Hospital Wood
Scheduled Date: 22 February 1994
Source: Historic Environment Scotland
Source ID: SM5919
Schedule Class: Cultural
Category: Prehistoric domestic and defensive: field clearance cairn, cairnfield; Prehistoric ritual and funera
Location: Kirkmahoe
County: Dumfries and Galloway
Electoral Ward: Lochar
Traditional County: Dumfriesshire
The monument consists of a Bronze Age burial ground, marked by a large number of small stone cairns and one larger ring-cairn.
The monument is located on a gently-sloping area to the E of the track leading to Shaws Farm, and just W of a fenceline. It consists of a cairnfield, a scatter of some 30 small stone cairns, which is the best preserved portion of a more diffuse group of small cairns running N to Hospital Wood, W to the track and S to the boundary of existing woodland. At the N end of the monument is a larger mound, either a ring-cairn or a small enclosed cremation cemetery.
The small cairns are all partly or wholly turf-covered. They range in diameter from 1.5m to 5m, and appear to be arranged in groups within the larger distribution. The ring-cairn or enclosed cremation cemetery is a circular feature 13.5m in diameter over an enclosing bank up to 3.0m wide and 0.4m high. The S part of the feature has been disturbed, but traces of what may have been an entrance are visible here.
The area to be scheduled is an irregular D-shape, with the ENE side formed by a fenceline (which is excluded from scheduling). It has maximum dimensions of 150m NNW-SSE by 80m, to include the small cairns and the ring-cairn together with an area around in which evidence relating to their construction may survive, as marked in red on the accompanying map.
Source: Historic Environment Scotland
The monument is of national importance as a well-preserved example of a fast-vanishing group of Bronze Age burial grounds. It displays a range of cairn size, and the presence of the larger ring-cairn or enclosed cremation cemetery suggests either a variety of ritual or use at two distinct periods. The monument is likely to contain important information, accessible to excavation and analysis, about Bronze Age funerary practices and their inter-relationship with agricultural land-use.
Source: Historic Environment Scotland
Bibliography
RCAHMS records the monument as NX 98 NE 18.
Source: Historic Environment Scotland
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