Chambered cairns

A chambered cairn is a burial monument, usually constructed during the Neolithic, consisting of a sizeable (usually stone) chamber around and over which a cairn of stones was constructed. Some chambered cairns are also passage-graves. They are found throughout Britain and Ireland, with the largest number in Scotland.

Typically, the chamber is larger than a cist, and will contain a larger number of interments, which are either excarnated bones or inhumations (cremations). Most were situated near a settlement, and served as that community's "graveyard".

During the early Neolithic (4000–3300 BC) architectural forms are highly regionalised with timber and earth monuments predominating in the east and stone-chambered cairns in the west. During the later Neolithic (3300–2500 BC) massive circular enclosures and the use of grooved ware and Unstan ware pottery emerge. Scotland has a particularly large number of chambered cairns; they are found in various different types described below. Along with the excavations of settlements such as Skara Brae, Links of Noltland, Barnhouse, Rinyo and Balfarg and the complex site at Ness of Brodgar these cairns provide important clues to the character of civilization in Scotland in the Neolithic. However the increasing use of cropmarks to identify Neolithic sites in lowland areas has tended to diminish the relative prominence of these cairns.

In the early phases bones of numerous bodies are often found together and it has been argued that this suggests that in death at least, the status of individuals was played down. During the late Neolithic henge sites were constructed and single burials began to become more commonplace; by the Bronze Age it is possible that even where chambered cairns were still being built they had become the burial places of prominent individuals rather than of communities as a whole.

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