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Ancestral Geographies of the Neolithic, Edmonds, Bender

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<< Our Photo Pages >> Barns Farm Dalgety Fife - Barrow Cemetery in Scotland in Fife

Submitted by AngieLake on Thursday, 25 September 2008  Page Views: 11430

Neolithic and Bronze AgeSite Name: Barns Farm Dalgety Fife Alternative Name: Barns Farm Early Bronze Age Cemetery
Country: Scotland County: Fife Type: Barrow Cemetery
Nearest Town: Dalgety Bay  Nearest Village: Aberdour
Map Ref: NT178842
Latitude: 56.043590N  Longitude: 3.321059W
Condition:
5Perfect
4Almost Perfect
3Reasonable but with some damage
2Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site
1Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks
0No data.
-1Completely destroyed
 1 Ambience:
5Superb
4Good
3Ordinary
2Not Good
1Awful
0No data.
 no data Access:
5Can be driven to, probably with disabled access
4Short walk on a footpath
3Requiring a bit more of a walk
2A long walk
1In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find
0No data.
 no data Accuracy:
5co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates
4co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map
3co-ordinates scaled from a bad map
2co-ordinates of the nearest village
1co-ordinates of the nearest town
0no data
 4

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Barns Farm Dalgety Fife
Barns Farm Dalgety Fife submitted by AngieLake : This Spey Curragh, displayed at the Coracle Museum in Cenarth in Wales is similar to the type found re-used as a coffin at a site excavated in Fife in 1974, and believed to be Barns Farm, Dalgety. The photo [top] shows the info board with that intriguing information, and the photo bottom, the full-sized coracle on display. (Vote or comment on this photo)
Barrow Cemetery in Fife. Early Bronze Age Cemetery excavated in 1974. As the result of a chance find in February 1973 an Early Bronze Age cemetery of six cists and three graves was excavated at Barns Farm, Dalgety, Fife. Besides the stone cists and the earthen graves a variety of pits and two hearths were found.

The cemetery, on the round top of a small hillock, had finally been sealed by a round barrow of scraped up soil. The total assemblage from the cemetery included three Food Vessels, one Beaker, a battle-axe, a shale necklace, jet beads and pendants, various flint tools, a copper or bronze knife, a copper or bronze awl or reamer; in addition there were several derived neolithic sherds and a few very small pieces of flint. The cists and graves contained inhumations and cremations, in some cases simultaneously deposited in the same grave. The experimental reconstruction of one of the cists suggested that the scale of the social group necessarily involved in the contruction of such cists might be as large as eight persons engaged for three days. It is also argued that one of the graves at least contained a coracle reused as a coffin.
[Proc Soc Antiq Scot, 112 (1982) 48-141. Report by Trevor Watkins, Dept of Archaeology, George Square, Edinburgh, with contributions by... (listed persons). Googled for 'coracle 1974 Bronze Age, Fife.]
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Barns Farm Dalgety Fife
Barns Farm Dalgety Fife submitted by AngieLake : Site plan, showing various features excavated. (See report details in site page comments.) (Vote or comment on this photo)

Barns Farm Dalgety Fife
Barns Farm Dalgety Fife submitted by AngieLake : The plan of the coffin in Grave 2 from the report (see details in site page comments.) (Vote or comment on this photo)

Barns Farm Dalgety Fife
Barns Farm Dalgety Fife submitted by AngieLake : The closest resemblance to the design of the coracle-coffin at Barns Farm Early Bronze Age cemetery at Dalgety is this coracle from Cenarth. (Vote or comment on this photo)

Do not use the above information on other web sites or publications without permission of the contributor.

Nearby Images from Geograph Britain and Ireland:
NT1784 : Road near Braefoot by Richard Webb
by Richard Webb
©2014(licence)
NT1784 : Temple ruins by James Allan
by James Allan
©2007(licence)
NT1784 : Temple Plantation on the Fife Coastal Path by Becky Williamson
by Becky Williamson
©2019(licence)
NT1784 : Path towards the Braefoot Bay Marine Terminal by Mat Fascione
by Mat Fascione
©2020(licence)
NT1784 : Fife Coastal Path towards Dalgety Bay by Mat Fascione
by Mat Fascione
©2020(licence)

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"Barns Farm Dalgety Fife" | Login/Create an Account | 1 comment
  
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Re: Barns Farm Dalgety Fife by AngieLake on Thursday, 25 September 2008
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Finding out about this interesting site via 'Google' was prompted by a visit to the Coracle Museum in Cenarth (SE of Cardigan) on the banks of the river Teifi in Wales.
Among the many fascinating coracles, information panels, photos, and artefacts on display, the words 'Bronze Age' caught my eye. Those words appeared on a panel next to the 'Spey Curragh', an example of Scottish coracle-style boats.
Here is the historical quote:

"In 1974 an excavation of a Bronze Age cemetary [sic] in Fife, Scotland revealed that in three of the graves the coffins were in fact coracles.
Apart from human remains, it showed that organic matter (animal skins) provided the walls of the coffin and small amounts of wood were found. There was no trace of a seat, but there were remains of a paddle. The dimensions and shapes were very similar to coracles still used today in west Wales.
Traces of fish were present, and the river conditions in Fife are also similar to those of the Towy and Teifi rivers in Wales.

This evidence shows that coracles have been used for fishing in Britain for at least 4,000 years since the early Bronze Age."

Googling turned up the information from a report of the excavation at Barns Farm, Dalgety, Fife. It seemed to match the description of the above text, although it seemed on first reading that there was only one coracle coffin in Grave 2.
A quote from p.119 of the report was interesting:
(Having already concluded that leather featured in the remains.. quote: "Accepting Dr McCawley's identification of sample no 20 as leather"..... "then we may conclude that the thin 'skin' of the coffin as preserved in the soil was the remains of animal hide."):
"We must conclude that the frame of the coffin was of the lightest possible construction, something like basketwork, wickerwork or hoops of very thin, pliant wood. While is it quite possible that such a construction could have been made expressly to serve as the coffin for the pupose of burial, it is difficult to explain why it should have been made in that particular shape. An alternative hypothesis is that the boat-like shape of the coffin indicates that its use as a coffin was secondary, and that it was originally a boat. From that suggestion it is an easy step to discover that recent British and Irish coracles and curraghs provide excellent analogues for the Grave 2 coffin both in shape, size and materials............ In particular south-west Welsh coracles preserve the same square shape at one end, which is the fore end, and the same shelving, semicircular stern; even the dimensions are extraordinarily close. Accounts of traditional coracle construction tell that heavy animal hides were stretched over a very light framework of hazel withies (or basketwork in the only surviving Scottish example; see Fenton 1972).. On the grounds of similarity in shape, size and materials used it is suggested that the coffin in Grave 2 was originally built and used as a coracle, a type of boat well suited to use in the shallow bays and sheltered waters of the north shore of the Firth of Forth."
"Although it seems probable that the coffins in Graves 1 and 3 were of the same materials as that of Grave 2 there are to the author's scant knowledge no parallels for skin boats of coracle construction of that shape. It is suggested in the fuller treatment of this point (Watkins 1980) that in the light of the inferred coracle reused as a coffin at Dalgety it may be possible to identify or confirm two other possible coracle-coffins of similar early date, one (unpublished) found with a Food Vessel inhumation at Corbridge in Northumberland and the other in the Ancholme estuary near Ferriby (Clark 1952: 283)."....."The recognition of coracles ..... adds to the range of coffin types and to the use of boats as coffins in the Early Bronze Age in Britain (see Ashbee 1960: 86-90), as well as carrying back the documentation of British skin-boats or coracles into prehistory well beyond their earlies

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