Documents

Where documents include maps, the use of this data is subject to terms and conditions (https://portal.historicenvironment.scot/termsandconditions).

The legal document available for download below constitutes the formal designation of the monument under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979. The additional details provided on this page are provided for information purposes only and do not form part of the designation. Historic Environment Scotland accepts no liability for any loss or damages arising from reliance on any inaccuracies within this additional information.

• Type

  Legal Documents

  Title

  SM4419_Legal Doc

  Download(https://portal.historicenvironment.scot/document/600010336)

Summary

Description

The monument comprises five round houses, a four-poster stone circle, a small kerb cairn, some twenty barrows and some nineteen small cairns. The houses include two simple embanked round houses each 9m across, two platforms with banks on their outer lips, one of them with an angular northward extension of the platform into the hillside, and a platform with a bank round it. To their N on the summit of the ridge is a group of at least twenty barrows up to 6m in diameter and up to 0.3m high, while further to the N, on a broad terrace on the side of Brankam Hill is a group of some nineteen small cairns up to 4m in diameter. About 50m above the easternmost houses is a small kerb cairn and some 30m further N is a small four-poster stone circle.

Statement of National Importance

The houses are of national importance as examples of 2 two different types in close proximity. The group of small barrows is of exceptional importance since the type is now rare but is likely to have been common; exploration could give considerable insight into the reasons behind the apparent paucity of late Bronze Age and Iron Age burials. The four-poster is of particular interest because it reinforces a local cluster including Baldovie Hill and because it belongs in a period when domestic monuments are common but funerary and ritual monuments are rare. The barrows, 4-poster and kerb cairn and the small cairns which latter, judging by their siting, are inappropriate for agriculture, form a ritual and funerary complex of national importance because it contains a variety of small vulnerable types probably once common but now rarely preserved. The monument is of national importance to the study of prehistoric houses, to the theme of the relationship of houses and ritual and funerary monuments in the late second and early first millenia BC, and to studies of the differences and similarities between clearance cairns and small funerary cairns.

References

Bibliography

About Scheduled Monuments

Historic Environment Scotland is responsible for designating sites and places at the national level. These designations are Scheduled monuments, Listed buildings, Inventory of gardens and designed landscapes and Inventory of historic battlefields.

We make recommendations to the Scottish Government about historic marine protected areas, and the Scottish Ministers decide whether to designate.

Scheduling is the process that identifies, designates and provides statutory protection for monuments and archaeological sites of national importance as set out in the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979.

We schedule sites and monuments that are found to be of national importance using the selection guidance published in Designation Policy and Selection Guidance (2019)

Scheduled monument records provide an indication of the national importance of the scheduled monument which has been identified by the description and map. The description and map (see ‘legal documents’ above) showing the scheduled area is the designation of the monument under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979. The statement of national importance and additional information provided are supplementary and provided for general information purposes only. Historic Environment Scotland accepts no liability for any loss or damages arising from reliance on any inaccuracies within the statement of national importance or additional information. These records are not definitive historical or archaeological accounts or a complete description of the monument(s).

The format of scheduled monument records has changed over time. Earlier records will usually be brief. Some information will not have been recorded and the map will not be to current standards. Even if what is described and what is mapped has changed, the monument is still scheduled.

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Find out more about scheduling and our other designations at www.historicenvironment.scot/advice-and-support. You can contact us on 0131 668 8914 or at designations@hes.scot.