Unstan Cairn

 Unstan Cairn 




Unstan Cairn sits on land adjacent to the Stenness Loch. It is a neolithic Cairn, famous for the pottery that was found in it.

The interior is a long room divided into five compartments by upright stone slabs projecting from the side walls.

Entry to the cairn is made into the second of the five compartments through a low passage from the ground outside. 

It was excavated in the 19th century by Robert Clouston, and in his report he gives a powerful impression that the roof was intact, and he describes the floor that he found, the skeletons lying on it, the pottery lying around, and the ash floor adjacent to the entrance. 

The skeletons in this cairn are usually in a foetal position.

In other cairns human bones were found to have been moved around in prehistory, sometimes artfully, sometimes randomly. Here though the bones seem mostly as they were laid.

The complete skeletons, from memory, are in the end stalls of the cairn, and there are a couple more in a small gallery with a beehive roof, off one wall of the cairn.

The pottery, of which there was a comparatively large quantity was mainly in the end compartments and it looks as it went into the cairn at the same time as the skeletons. 

In the area immediately in front of the tunnel entrance into the cairn a large area of peaty, ashy material has been spread, and I would suggest that this was where people entered the cairn at a later date for shelter, and to cook and eat meat from animals that they had hunted.

The carbon dates of animal bones found in cairns in Orkney are generally hundreds of years later than the bones of people in them.

Jeffery Nicholls 

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