Heel-shaped cairn

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Scheme of a Stalled Cairns (left), a Maes Howe-Type (middle) and a Heel-shaped Cairns (right)
Vementry Cairn

The heel-shaped cairn ( German  sales shaped stone hill ) and his most cross-shaped chamber are in Scotland , primarily in Caithness and Sutherland ( Cairns from Camster ) and the Shetland spread Megalithanlagenform . On Orkney , the Isbister Cairn and the Head of Work are the only plants that come close to the shape.

The chambers are mostly located in a round cairn made of quarry stone , which was surrounded either at the same time or later with the step-shaped platform, with a front width of up to 20 m and a height of 1.0 to 1.5 m, which is partially surrounded by large curbs. A slightly concave shape made of block stones (not in the "post and panel" technique) is characteristic of the exedra with particularly high boulders on both sides.

The often cross-shaped chambers, which can be reached via a short corridor , have a large head and two smaller side niches. They were roofed with cantilever vaults , but mostly only remnants are left. The best preserved facilities of this type are Punds Water and Vementry in the Shetlands. Others are Islesburgh Cairn , Gillaburn , Hill of Caldback, Hill of Dale, Mangaster, Muckle Heog, Pettigarths Field , Turdale Water, Viville Loch, Ward of Silwicks and Wind Hamars.

The special form of the Cairn o 'Get (also called Garrywhin) resembles a Rundcairn, which was built over with a double horned “Horned Long Cairn” with a round chamber, as it otherwise occurs in Sutherland ( Camster Round and Skelpick Long ). The initially round complex of Vementry with the chamber typical for heel-shaped cairns was built over in heel-shaped form and provided with the approximately 10.6 m wide exedra .

literature

  • Thomas Hastie Bryce: The So-called Heel-shaped Cairns of Shetland, with Remarks on the Chambered Tombs of Orkney and Shetland. In: Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland Vol.?, 1939 ISSN  0081-1564 , pp. 23-36 .
  • James L. Davidson, Audrey S. Henshall: The Chambered Cairns of Caithness, an Inventory of the Structures and their Contents. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 1991, ISBN 0-7486-0256-9 .
  • Audrey Shore Henshall, James NG Ritchie: The Chambered Cairns of Sutherland, an Inventory of the Structures and their Contents. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 1995, ISBN 0-7486-0609-2 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ James Dyer: Ancient Britain 1990 p. 58