Garbeg
The Pictish hill burial ground of Garbeg near Drumnadrochit in Glen Urquhart in Inverness-shire in Scotland consists of 17 heather-covered, almost exclusively circular Iron Age cairns surrounded by moats. You are on the edge of a field system on land that does not appear to have been cultivated. A circle of huts lies on the western edge of the group.
With the exception of “Cairn A”, the diameters, measured between the centers of the trenches, vary between 7.4 m and 4.0 m. The cairns of the Cairns are flat and between 0.5 m and 0.8 m high. "Cairn A" is 8.5 m in diameter and 0.2 m high. Its moat is interrupted in the southeast by a dam about 2.0 m wide. The trench of "Cairn B" is 0.9 m wide and 0.3 m deep. All other trenches are 0.6 m wide and 0.3 m deep. The ditch of "Cairn C" encloses a square cairn of about 4.5 × 4.5 m. The ditch of "Cairn D" encloses a connected rectangular cairn of 12.0 × 5.0 m with a separating wall. The purpose of the non-circular systems is uncertain, but they appear to coincide with the circular Cairns. The "Cairns E", "F" and "G" are defaced. "Cairn H" was destroyed in 1974 by the landowner. In the middle, immediately under the lawn, he found the fragment of a sandstone slab (now in the Inverness Museum) with parts of a crescent moon and a V-rod as incised symbols. The rest of the cairn was excavated by LE Wedderburn describing the circular moat. Wedderburn has also partially excavated the square "Cairn J". There is a small upright boulder at each corner. The sides are marked by shallow trenches that end just before the corner stones. Inside is a small rectangular area filled with rubble, delimited by stones that apparently used to stand on the edge.
Wedderburn claims there are more Cairns in this group. There are two suspicious humps nearby. But the only other one that can definitely be identified is isolated, about 82 m north of hut circle B. It appears to be a cairn with a diameter of 3.5 m and a height of 0.4 m, standing on a round platform of 0.1 m high and surrounded by a shallow trench with a diameter of 7.8 m, which is disturbed by a path that cuts through it. There is no adjunct wall as stated by Wedderburn. The walls to which he refers are part of a cluster of walls of a 250 × 120 m field system in which the Cairn group lies.
Nearby is the Drumnadrochit stone chest .
See also
Web links
- Entry on Garbeg in Canmore, Historic Environment Scotland's database
- The Picts at Garbeg and Whitebridge engl.
Coordinates: 57 ° 21 '22 " N , 4 ° 28' 35.8" W.