Stalled Cairn on Swona
The Stalled Cairn on Swona is a heavily eroded cairn on the Tarf in Stanemora, at the southern end of the Orkney island of Swona in Scotland .
Seven upright panels (some in the form of a pent roof ) of the east-west facing chamber of a Stalled Cairn have been preserved . The highest of the slabs is 1.45 m high, the mound material has largely been removed or eroded. The type takes its name from the fact that the chamber is divided into two rows of boxes opposite each other by thin panels placed on both sides. It is represented with 60 plants on the Orkney and associated with the Unstan Ware as ceramics . At Stalled or Orkney-Cromarty-Cairns (OC) the very short gear is not an essential feature. The chamber itself is rectangular and elongated (e.g. Midhowe Cairn , Unstan Cairn ).
Pairs of high plates and the stump, an end plate, form the remains of a tripartite chamber. The two eastern orthostats are only 0.6 m apart, are 0.9 and 1.0 m high and could be the end plates of a corridor. The middle pair is 1.5 m apart and 1.25 m high. The western pair stands 1.7 apart and is 1.45 and 1.15 m high, respectively, with an orthostat split into two thin plates. Near the center of the first compartment, three thin plates lie almost perpendicularly on their long edges, probably parts of a broken plate. Other plate stumps on the south side of the Cairns appear to be secondary structures.
The remains of the cairn have a height of 0.8 m in the area of the chamber. The perimeter of the cairn, especially on the eroded south-west side, is difficult to define. It can have been about 16.5 × 10.5 m. The island is so small (92 ha) that its inhabitants alone were not enough to build the megalithic complex. Like the plants built on other small islands (e.g. Holm of Papa ), a larger user community will be responsible for the construction.
literature
- James L. Davidson, AS Henshall: The chambered cairns of Orkney. An inventory of the structures and their contents. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 1989, ISBN 0-85224-547-5 .
- Hamish Haswell-Smith: The Scottish Islands. A comprehensive guide to every Scottish Island. Fully revised 2nd edition. Canongate, Edinburgh et al. 2004, ISBN 1-84195-454-3 .
Web links
- Entry on Stalled Cairn on Swona in Canmore, Historic Environment Scotland database
- Remnants of the Stalled Cairn on Swona; image
Coordinates: 58 ° 44 '11.3 " N , 3 ° 3' 55.7" W.