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Cairn-na-gath

Long Cairn (Neolithic)

Site Name Cairn-na-gath

Classification Long Cairn (Neolithic)

Canmore ID 62319

Site Number NX26NW 2

NGR NX 21261 67417

NGR Description Centre

Datum OSGB36 - NGR

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/site/62319

Ordnance Survey licence number AC0000807262. All rights reserved.
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Digital Images

Administrative Areas

  • Council Dumfries And Galloway
  • Parish New Luce
  • Former Region Dumfries And Galloway
  • Former District Wigtown
  • Former County Wigtownshire

Archaeology Notes

NX26NW 2 2126 6741.

(NX 2125 6741) Cairn-na-Gath (NR).

OS 6" map (1957)

A long cairn, a steep-sided pile of bare stones, roughly trapezoidal in plan and measuring 100 feet long by 64 feet wide at the 9ft high south end and 34 feet at the 8ft high north end. The south end, which seems to have been gently bowed outwards, has been robbed for 21 feet from the edge without internal sturctures being exposed although there are vague remains of secondary enclosures both outside and inside the original edge. Almost the whole of the new quarter has also been removed and the highest point of the cairn is crowned by a modern marker cairn.

A S Henshall 1972, visited 1962

NX 2126 6741 No change to previous information.

Surveyed at 1:10 000.on

Visited by OS (BS) 4 May 1976

Activities

Field Visit (23 August 1989)

This cairn is as described.

Visited by RCAHMS (SH) 23 August 1989.

Note (10 November 2021)

The location, classification and period of this site have been reviewed.

Digital Terrain Model (July 2022)

NX 21262 67409 In July 2022 a Digital Terrain Model (DTM) was produced of the long cairn at Cairn na Gath (Canmore ID: 62319). The aim was to produce improved images of the cairn, and, secondly, to attempt to edit out the various later additions to the site: stone shelters, animal pens, a shepherd’s cairn, in order to gain a better appreciation of the morphology of the final cairn. An obstacle was encountered: the SE and NE ‘projections’ from the cairn outline appeared connected with later drystone walls built over the site. This is particularly the case with the long SE projection, where a wall runs down from the main cairn mass on to the projection, making it seem as if the wall and projection were a unity. This question is slightly less the case with the small NE projection, which appears to line up with the remnants of a drystone wall running back down the cairn side at an angle. The SW projection has no feature associated with it. However, in all three cases, it does appear as if the projections are integral with the final stone cairn: the surface of the shoulder of the SE projection is contiguous either side of the stone wall which runs down it; the

slope of the final cairn mass runs down into the NE projection, which is therefore not differentiated from it; and there is no clear differentiation for the SW projection.

The plan drawing has three arcs drawn in a thinner line inside the three projections, which are intended to be extrapolations of the otherwise very clear outline of the cairn.

In so doing they highlight the departure of the projections

from the final cairn ‘scheme’. In this image, there is really only one context which the three projections are consistent with: the morphology of timber and stone structures associated with non-megalithic long barrows/cairns (Kinnes 1992), particularly those in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. In this case, the projections would mark the horns of a cairn façade and linked structures to the rear of a façade and presumed timber chamber.

It is suggested that the stone projections cover and mark the former existence and location of timber structures associated with an earlier phase of the cairn. In this concept, the early SE projection was built over with a much later drystone wall. The final s tone c airn c ould n ot e asily c over a nd i ncorporate s uch a wide façade, but it is of interest that the builders chose not only to not cover it, but also to change the alignment of the cairn. The diagonal trench seen inside the southern edge of the cairn mass on the NNW digital terrain model, close to the centre of this would-be façade, is perhaps of interest in this respect.

Observations around the highest point of the cairn, in the area where the shepherd’s cairn is now, suggested that the final surface of the cairn is still present there. If so, the sharp ridge top seen at the tail end did not continue as a sharp entity toward the broad head end, but instead broadened out into more of a dome.

The projections might suggest why the cairn was called the ‘Cairn of the Cat’, noting an understanding of the monument as animated.

Alistair Buckoke

(Source: DES Volume 23)

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