Unchambered long cairn facts for kids
Unchambered long cairns are ancient stone mounds found in Scotland and northern England. They are called "unchambered" because they don't have stone rooms or chambers inside them. Instead, some might have had wooden chambers that have since disappeared. These cairns are a special type of megalithic monument, which means they are made of large stones.
About 28 of these long cairns are in northern Scotland, and 21 are in southern Scotland. It's hard to know for sure if they had wooden chambers without digging them up. This makes it tricky to classify them perfectly.
Famous Unchambered Cairns
Here are three important examples of these cairns:
- Dalladies in Kincardineshire: This cairn has interesting cup and ring marks, which are ancient carvings on stones.
- Slewcairn in Kirkcudbrightshire.
- Lochhill in Kirkcudbrightshire.
The last two, Slewcairn and Lochhill, are especially interesting. Stone chambers were added to them later, after they were first built. This shows how building ideas changed and mixed over time.
Why These Cairns Are Important
Even though none of the northern unchambered cairns have been fully dug up, they are very important for understanding Scotland's ancient building history. Northern Scotland is famous for another type of ancient burial mound called passage tombs, which are usually round.
Sites like Tulach an t'Sionnaich show that both long cairns and round cairns were used by the same ancient communities. This means people used different building styles at the same time or changed them over many years. For example, some round cairns, like those at Camster, even had long cairns built over them later. This way, the older round shape was kept, but a new long mound was added on top.
Many unchambered cairns, and even some with stone chambers, have a special curved entrance area called a "concave forecourt." These forecourts remind us of older ones that were built with wood in places like Haddenham and Street House in Yorkshire.
Learn More
- Frances Lynch: Megalithic Tombs and Long Barrows in Britain. Shire Publications Ltd. 1997 ISBN: 0-7478-0341-2.
