Kilmartin Glen: Dunchraigaig Cairn

Kilmartin Glen is known for its linear cemetery of five prehistoric burial cairns. They form a two kilometer line across the valley floor, from Glebe Cairn in the north to Ri Cruin in the south.

Dunchraigaig Cairn is of the same form and date, but it doesn’t fall into line. It sits a little to the south-east of the other cairns. 

Like the other Kilmartin cairns, Dunchraigaig is about 30m wide. But excavations in the 1800s showed it was quite an unusual monument.

The cairn has three cists inside. The cist to the east contained only cremated bones. The central cist contained a full-length body on top of its cover slab, with cremated human bones inside and below this a layer of rough paving which revealed yet another body, in a crouched position.

But the third cist, on the south-east side was the most unusual. Dug directly into the ground, lined with drystone cobbled walls and capped with a massive stone, it contained the remains of up to 10 individuals, some cremated and some not. It also held a whetstone, a greenstone axe and a flint knife.

While cairns often became the burial place of more than one individual, it is rare to find so many individuals in one cist. Bronze Age cist burials, like this one, were usually reserved for one person – multiple burials are more often seen in Neolithic tombs.

More recent discoveries have added to the allure of Dunchraigaig.

In 2021, the earliest known animal carvings in Scotland were discovered inside the cairn by visitor Hamish Fenton. Thought to be between 4,000 and 5,000-years-old, they include depictions of two male red deer, which are considered to have been the largest deer species in Scotland during this time. Full-grown antlers can be seen on both animals.

Valuable as sources of meat, hides, and with bones and antlers used for a variety of tools, deer would have been very important to local communities during the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age.