Ri Cruin
Ri Cruin is a cairn located 200 m south of the hamlet of Ri Cruin in the Kilmartin Valley in Argyll and Bute in Scotland . Excavations were carried out by Reginald J. Mapleton in 1870, J. Hewat Craw in 1929 and Childe , who also carried out the restoration in 1936.
Stone box 1
The cairn was built to cover the northernmost of the three stone boxes placed in a pit in the center of a mound . The northeast-southwest oriented box measures 1.25 m × 0.62 m and is 0.65 m deep. It is covered by a completely oversized slab (3.0 m × 1.05 m and 0.18 m thick). Most of the bottom of the box is formed by a carefully inserted plate. The rest of the floor space was neatly paved with small rocks. The side panels were fluted to hold the north end panel. Mapleton found only cremated bones on the baseplate.
Stone box 2
Within the stone material of the hill, about seven meters to the southeast and just inside the curbs of the hill, lies the side plate of a secondary stone box. The plate is fluted to hold an end plate and Mapleton found one of the end plates in situ . The stone box plate measures approximately 1.1 mx 0.3 m. There were no finds.
Stone box 3
South of box 2 and just outside the curbs of the hill is the third stone box in a pit. It is now partially covered by the large capstone. It is trapezoidal in plan and oriented roughly east-west. The 0.8 m deep box measures 2.0 m in length and tapers to the east from one meter to 0.6 m. Each of the two side walls consists of a pair of plates. The north wall forms a straight line, while the south wall is bent inwards. The western end plate is adorned with seven picked axes. There used to be a narrow vertical plate at the east end of the stone box, which was decorated with a vertical groove and at right angles to it, shorter arms with bulbous ends. The carving has been interpreted as a boat or a halberd . The plate was destroyed in a fire in Poltalloch house, but an impression is kept in the Royal Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh.
Most of the cairn has been rebuilt. It was 18.3 m to 19.5 m in diameter. The hill had been disturbed in one quadrant by a lime kiln, but its traces were completely removed in the course of the reconstruction. Traces of the curbs were recorded on the east and south arch (four are visible here).
See also
literature
- Kilmartin. Prehistoric and Early Historic Monuments. The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS), Edinburgh 2008, ISBN 978-1-902419-03-9 , pp. 34-36, (first published in: The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS): Mid Argyll Cowal. Prehistoric Early Historic Monuments (= Argyll. Vol. 6 = Report. An Inventory of the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland. 24). HMSO, London et al. 1988, ISBN 0-11-493384- 7 ).
Web links
- Short text, site plan and picture ( Memento from March 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
Coordinates: 56 ° 7 ′ 1.5 ″ N , 5 ° 29 ′ 58.5 ″ W.