Cairn of Torrylin

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Cairn of Torrylin.

The cairn of Torrylin (also called Torrylinn or Torlin Cairn ) is located with other megalithic structures south of the A841 less than 400 meters from the south coast of the Isle of Arran , on the banks of the River Kilmory Water in North Ayrshire in Scotland . Access to the Cairn is possible from Lagg or Torrylinn. The reason for the exposed location is that the building materials are almost ready for installation due to coastal erosion .

The ideal Clyde Tombs - Torrylin roughly corresponds to the illustration below

description

Torrylin is the remainder of a Clyde Tomb . Megalithic systems of this type are found in south-west Scotland, particularly in the Clyde Valley . They were usually made around 3300 BC. And usually have concave courtyards with facades made of orthostats and a linear gallery-like arrangement of the chambers in the cairn.

Originally, the Torrylin Cairn was a large rectangular hill surrounded by curbs. One of its two narrow sides was cut to form a concave exedra that delimited the paved forecourt. The ceiling panels are missing, but most of the bearing stones that formed a gallery of four chambers have been preserved, at least in part. In the middle of the hill end, two upright stones form the entrance to a secondary, rectangular chamber in the hill.

The current shape of the facility is difficult to combine with the ideal-typical shape of a Clyde Tomb. Both ends of the rectangle were later built over, so that only a humpback hill about 19.8 meters in diameter remains. The cairn was excavated in 1861 and again in 1896 and 1900. The 1900 excavation revealed the remains of six adults and two children in the third, and shattered pottery and a flint knife in the fourth chamber of the gallery.

To the east is the Clyde Tomb of East Bennan .

literature

  • Jack G. Scott: The Clyde Cairns of Scotland. In: Glyn Daniel, Poul Kjærum (Ed.): Megalithic graves and ritual. Papers presented at the III Atlantic Colloquium, Moesgård 1969 (= Jysk Arkaeologisk Selskabs skrifter. 11). Gyldendalske Boghandel (in comm.), Copenhagen 1973, ISBN 87-00-08861-7 , pp. 117–128.
  • Jörg Lindenbeck: Investigations into late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age grave forms in south-west Scotland. In: Archaeological Information . Vol. 11, No. 2, 1988, pp. 228-232.
  • Jürgen E. Walkowitz: The megalithic syndrome. European cult sites of the Stone Age (= contributions to the prehistory and early history of Central Europe. Vol. 36). Beier & Beran, Langenweißbach 2003, ISBN 3-930036-70-3 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Tim Darvill, Clyde-Carlingford Culture. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archeology. Oxford University Press 2009, ISBN 978-0192800053

Coordinates: 55 ° 26 '26.6 "  N , 5 ° 14' 2.9"  W.