Description

The monument is a burial cairn dating probably to the Bronze Age (between around 2000 BC and 800 BC). It is visible as a truncated, grass-covered, roughly circular mound, with a depression in its centre. The cairn measures approximately 20m in diameter and survives up to a height of 1m in places. The monument is located at about 150m OD, close to the River Calder. The monument was first scheduled in 1989, but the documentation did not meet modern standards: the present amendment rectifies this.

The scheduled area is an irregular shape on plan to include the remains described above and an area around them within which evidence relating to the monument's construction, use and abandonment is expected to survive, as shown in red on the accompanying map. The scheduling specifically excludes the above-ground elements of all public realm infrastructure, including the top 300mm of modern surfaces and post-and-wire fencing to allow for their maintenance.

Source: Historic Environment Scotland

Statement of Scheduling

The monument is of national importance as the remains of a substantial round cairn with the potential to make a significant addition to our understanding of the design, construction and use of burial monuments and the nature of belief systems and burial practices during the Bronze Age in Scotland. Ritual and funerary monuments are often our main source of evidence for human activity during the Bronze Age. They are particularly important for enhancing our understanding of Bronze Age society, its organisation, economy, religion and demography. Despite some disturbance both in the past and by recent development, this cairn is reasonably well-preserved and retains high potential for buried archaeological remains, including human burials, associated grave goods and palaeoenvironmental evidence, which could enhance our understanding of its construction, development sequence and period of use, and the nature of prehistoric funerary practices and associated activities. Today its landscape setting is partly obscured by amenity woodland and modern development, but originally the monument occupied a prominent location above the Clyde valley and it may have been intervisible with at least two other cairns nearby that have since been destroyed. The loss of the monument would significantly diminish our ability to appreciate and understand funerary practice, death and burial in prehistoric times, and the placing of such monuments within the landscape.

Source: Historic Environment Scotland

Sources

Bibliography

Other Information

RCAHMS record the monument as NS65NE 28.

References

RCAHMS, 1978, Lanarkshire: An Inventory of the Prehistoric and Roman monuments, Edinburgh, 62, no 80.

Wilson, J A, 1936-7, A Contribution to the History of Lanarkshire, 2v Glasgow, vol 1, 358-9.

Canmore

https://canmore.org.uk/site/44878/

Source: Historic Environment Scotland