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Ancestral Geographies of the Neolithic, Edmonds, Bender

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<< Our Photo Pages >> Olcote Kerbed Cairn - Cairn in Scotland in Isle of Lewis

Submitted by Andy B on Friday, 19 October 2007  Page Views: 6569

Neolithic and Bronze AgeSite Name: Olcote Kerbed Cairn Alternative Name: Breasclete Cairn
Country: Scotland County: Isle of Lewis Type: Cairn
Nearest Town: Stornoway
Map Ref: NB2179634733
Latitude: 58.213244N  Longitude: 6.73875W
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
3 Ambience:
5Superb
4Good
3Ordinary
2Not Good
1Awful
0No data.
2 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.
5 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
5

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Olcote Kerbed Cairn
Olcote Kerbed Cairn submitted by SandyG : View from above and south west. (Vote or comment on this photo)
Kerbed Cairn in Isle of Lewis. The cairn was discovered during an evaluation of a dense scatter of worked and unworked quartz made by local archaeologists, Margaret and Ron Curtis. The remains lay in the path of the improvement of the single track road through Breasclete.

A range of archaeological features and deposits was identified and recorded within the excavation trench.

These fell into three groups on stratigraphic grounds: pre-cairn features, including pits, spade or cultivation marks and a buried ground surface; the cairn itself, including inner and outer< kerbs, burnt peat deposits, a central cist and other features; and modern deposits which cut the cairn, including post-holes and field drains.

Ref: SAIR 13:Excavation of a Bronze Age Kerbed Cairn at Olcote, Breasclete, Near Calanais, Isle of Lewis (Archive Link)
by Tim Neighbour with contributions by S Carter, M Church, M Johnson, K MacSweeney, P Milburn & G Warren
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Olcote Kerbed Cairn
Olcote Kerbed Cairn submitted by SandyG : View from above and north. (Vote or comment on this photo)

Olcote Kerbed Cairn
Olcote Kerbed Cairn submitted by Postman : Craning my neck through the wire fence from the road (Vote or comment on this photo)

Olcote Kerbed Cairn
Olcote Kerbed Cairn submitted by Postman : Half is better than zero I guess (Vote or comment on this photo)

Olcote Kerbed Cairn
Olcote Kerbed Cairn submitted by Postman : I searched for the other half high and low but i'm afraid it is most definitely gone. (Vote or comment on this photo)

Olcote Kerbed Cairn
Olcote Kerbed Cairn submitted by Postman : A whole car park for only half a cairn, only in Lewis. (Vote or comment on this photo)

Olcote Kerbed Cairn
Olcote Kerbed Cairn submitted by SandyG : View from above and south.

Olcote Kerbed Cairn
Olcote Kerbed Cairn submitted by Creative Commons : Breascleit Cairn This is the remaining half of a prehistoric burial cairn, discovered during road works and excavated in 1999 - then half destroyed by the road widening. The village of Breascleit (Breasclete) is in the background with the old millhouse to the left and the primary school to the right. I lived in the nearest house behind where I am standing, 1974-1983, and my children both attende...

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"Olcote Kerbed Cairn" | Login/Create an Account | 3 News and Comments
  
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Excavation of a Bronze Age Kerbed Cairn at Olcote - Tim Neighbour by Andy B on Sunday, 11 February 2018
(User Info | Send a Message)
Excavation of a Bronze Age Kerbed Cairn at Olcote, Breasclete, Near Calanais, Isle of Lewis by Tim Neighbour, CFA Archaeology Ltd,
with contributions by
S Carter, M Church, M Johnson, K McSweeney, P Milburn and G Warren
https://web.archive.org/web/20060222174852/http://www.sair.org.uk:80/sair13/sair13.pdf
[ Reply to This ]
    Ritualistic cultivation marks underneath Olcote cairn? by Andy B on Sunday, 11 February 2018
    (User Info | Send a Message)
    The soil micromorphological analysis has demonstrated
    that the topsoil was stripped from the site of
    the cairn prior to its construction while excavation
    demonstrated that cultivation marks had been
    preserved beneath the cairn in the north-east
    quadrant of the site.

    Barclay has suggested that
    prehistoric cultivation marks, which are usually
    recorded as ard marks, are more often the result of
    spade work and are the result of cutting and removing
    turf prior to cultivation (Barclay 1997, 142).

    The cultivation marks at Olcote were not dissimilar to
    those discovered at Rosinish (Shepherd & Tuckwell
    1977), where they were not associated with a burial
    monument at all. However, such a process would
    have been necessary to remove the turf and prepare
    the ground for the construction of the cairn at Olcote
    and it is suggested that the marks here are unlikely
    to be agricultural traces.

    The presence of cultivation marks beneath burial
    monuments of the Neolithic and Bronze Age has
    been recorded across Europe (Tarlow 1995). It has
    been suggested that many of these marks, such as
    those beneath South Street Long Barrow, have ‘a
    strange vigorousness’ (Taylor 1996, 184) and that
    the act of marking the soil was a deliberate ritual
    preparation of the ground performed prior to the
    erection of the cairn.

    While it seems that the cultivation marks at
    Olcote were the result of the prosaic act of removing
    topsoil and turf to provide a level subsoil surface for
    the construction of the cairn, it is suggested that an
    element of ritual was also attached to the process.

    Source: P.62 of the above report
    [ Reply to This ]

Re: Olcote Kerbed Cairn by davidmorgan on Monday, 08 September 2014
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