ANEXO: EQUIPO DE MANEJO DE CRISIS

Like the Pictish symbols, the construction of ‘platform cairns’, or low, often flat-topped mounds of stone, seems to be quite standardised even across remarkable distances (Ashmore 1980; 2003). The rite begins with a burial in a long cist, or more rarely a dug grave, followed by the backfilling of the grave cut with clean, sterile sand. Unlike shallow flat graves, those under cairns can be up to a meter below ground level, and often more sand had to be brought in to fill the void (Edwards 1927). The use of sterile sand layers is nearly ubiquitous, which points to its ritual significance, found even in the Middle Iron Age cairns of Durness SUT (4.1.2); if this is meant to be a protective boundary against pollution, it may help explain the function of cairns. The next step is the cairn itself: whether round or square, a kerb of upright stones or coursed boulders is first set out. In square cairns, the corners are often emphasised by upright corner-posts, and sometimes the midpoints as well. A pavement of close-set flat boulders is then laid within the kerb, topped by a layer of smaller, water-worn pebbles. In many cases, these pebbles are carefully chosen quartzite or otherwise uniformly white stone. The widespread occurrence of this carefully planned ritual, from Fife (Greig 2000) to Sutherland (Close-Brooks 1980)

to Shetland (Bigelow 1984) to South Uist (Mulville et al. 2003), shows that the use of this monument made a clear statement, perhaps marking a political affiliation; due to their distribution, they are often dubbed ‘Pictish’ cairns.

Figure 5.12: Sum of all radiocarbon dates from cairn burials in Scotland.

The earliest dated ‘Pictish’ cairn, using the complex layering sequence described above, is grave 89/2 at Galson, Lewis INV, radiocarbon dated to cal AD 133-532 (Neighbour et al. 2000; Ponting 1989), and Middle Iron Age precursors have now been excavated in Durness SUT (above, 4.1.2), which make use of the term ‘Pictish’ to describe them largely anachronistic (viz., Brady et al. 2007). They way they were seen is an interesting topic to be discussed further below (5.3.5), but the way they were used is a different matter. A hint comes in the form of pot lids inserted into cairns. Both the cairn above Galson 89/2 (Ponting 1989: 96) and Cairn 1 at Lundin Links FIF (Greig 2000: 590-592) have a dressed sandstone disc carefully placed in the body of the cairn. As mentioned earlier, a broken stone disc was also found capping long cist R below cairn 5 at Lundin Links (5.1.2). If these were pot lids, then their use for ‘capping’ burials just as they once capped pots or urns may be a hint of the kinds of rituals surrounding these funerary events, usually obscured to us. This image of a cairn as a vessel in the ground may reference prehistoric cremation practices, as the kerbed cairns already seem to in their architectural form. Alternatively, the vessel may be seen as a food container, symbolising or even ensuring the continuation of life.

Figure 5.13: Composite plan of the Ackergill CAI cairn cemetery (Williams 2007b after Edwards 1926, 1927). Grave 6, not shown, is roughly 53m NW of the main group.

But as with any ritual practice, each instance is a unique statement within an accepted norm. The best example of such variations at work may be found in the cairn cemetery of Ackergill Links CAI (Edwards 1926; Edwards 1927). Although the cemetery was excavated before scientific dating was possible, it is considered a classic example of the ‘Pictish’ square cairn tradition due to the use of diagnostic corner-post kerbs and the association with two Pictish symbol stones. The reproduction of Edwards’ 1926 plan (Figure 5.13) over the years has made the image familiar to any scholar of the Picts. However, given the variety of cairn types, with multiple layers of burials flattened by the plan view, Ackergill is anything but typical, and its layout is worth discussing at length.

The majority of the cemetery is cut into a large natural sand mound on the shoreline at the point where Sinclair’s Bay changes from sandy beach to rocky shore. At the northwest extremity of this mound is ‘grave 6’, a 5.4m round kerbed cairn (Figure 5.14) containing a massive sub-oval corbelled drystone chamber. This chamber contains four unprotected burials at different levels in a clean sand fill. The highest two burials were laid on their left side: one is a flexed male, the other an extended female wearing a bronze chain around the neck. The lower two burials were supine, extended males. All were oriented E-W (heads to

east). The shared orientation links the occupants of this corbelled chamber but the change in body position from supine to flexed to left-side (dressed) burial may reflect a chronological development.

Figure 5.14: Ackergill ‘grave 6’ (after Edwards 1926). I am grateful to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland for permission to reproduce these images.

Near the centre of the sand mound is the core of the cemetery, consisting of five cairns and two isolated long cists, all in a line roughly following the NW-SE axis of the mound. Even within this area, no two cairns were alike. Cairn 6, the only round cairn, was separate from the main group, as were small square cairns 9 and 10. Cairns 3 and 6 had kerbs of coursed masonry, while cairns 4 and 5, and to a lesser extent disturbed cairns 8 and 9, had kerbs of upright slabs of stone. Corner posts were used in cairns 3, 4 and 5, with additional upright posts at the mid-points of the kerbs of 4, 5, and 8. Graves were incorporated into these monuments in various ways. Cairns 5 and 6 incorporated corbelled inner chambers holding multiple graves; cairns 2 and 4 contained long cists within the body of the cairn material; the remaining cairns have long cists in sand layers beneath them, from directly below the cairn surface in cairn 10 to as much as 2 meters deep below cairn 8.

Edwards only discovered a cist over a meter beneath cairn 3 in a second season of excavation (1927), and so cairns 2, 4, 5 and 6 may yet have long cists beneath them as well. A further complication is that many of the graves beneath cists do not match the orientations of the cairns above them, and so they may not all have been built at the same time. However, the orientation of graves B and C in cairn 4 were clearly determined by the kerb of the cairn; grave C uses the kerb as an end slab. Grave A, a small, tent-like cist, was placed directly over grave B, and so this cairn in particular demonstrates a long sequence of reuse. The interment of four individuals in varying positions in corbelled cairn 6 also

seems to be an example of a grave that built up over a period of time, as do cists 3 and 10 where the orientations do not match the overlying cairns.

A more intriguing example of the long-term reuse of this site is in the use of Pictish symbol stones (Figure 5.15). The largest (I Fraser 2008: 96.1) was apparently once upright near the NW edge of the sand mound, close to the corbelled cairn 6, but the slab was found in pieces; only the fragment which remains, bearing the rectangle symbol, bottom of a salmon symbol and an ogham inscription reading NEHTETRI (Forsyth 1996: 227-242), was ever recorded. A second broken fragment (Figure 5.15, 96.2), also bearing a rectangle symbol and the hint of a second, was found near the head end of long cist 1 (Figure 5.13). These would appear to be marking the graves of individuals interred here, but they have no stratigraphic relationship to any graves. Instead, it is arguable that these stones have also witnessed periods of reuse, like the cairns themselves. It is difficult to tell whether the ogham on 96.1 postdates the symbols, but one thing that links both stones is that the second symbols have been broken off, leaving only a rectangle on each. It is possible that this was no accident, and it is striking that every Pictish stone found associated with a cairn or built into a cist is fragmented or shows signs of reuse (Clarke 2007).

96.1 96.2

Figure 5.15: Pictish symbol stones from the Ackergill mound. Numbering after RCAHMS (Fraser 2008, 76); not to scale. Image 96.1: © Historic Scotland, licensor www.scran.ac.uk. Image 96.2: Crown copyright © RCAHMS.

The reason for describing this cemetery at such length is to emphasise that while the ‘Pictish’ cairns display some overarching similarities (corner posts, use of orientated long

cists, carefully layered cairn material, sterile sand layers), there is plenty of scope for variation. Just in this one cemetery, each monument is almost unique in its layout while still corresponding to the recognisable ‘Pictish cairn’ type. Like the nearby cemeteries at Keiss and Stain CAI (Laing 1866; 1868), the cists were cut into a natural sand mound parallel to the coastline, which is what largely dictates their orientations; hence most of the burials here are NW-SE, while at Keiss the S-N graves echo the axis of the mound. At Ackergill, we get a glimpse of the long time-depth of the mortuary ritual involved in the construction and use of these monuments, some cairns reused two, even three times. Given the lack of radiocarbon dates, we cannot be sure how contemporary these graves all are, but stray bone eroding from the mound in 2004 was radiocarbon dated to cal AD 256-530 (DES 2004, 165); the bronze chain around the neck of the highest burial in cairn 6 has been variously dated to both the 2nd and 10th centuries (Close-Brooks 1984; Edwards 1926). Given the complex layout and stratigraphy discussed above, it would be irresponsible to assume anything other than a very long time-span covered by the activity here. More interesting is the possibility that this site, and the others like it, was continually accessed, reused, and its significance recreated for many centuries, as seems to happen at a number of cairn sites (discussed further below, 5.3.4). And yet throughout the changing significance of these monuments, some patterns remained, including the use of long cists and a general tendency for burials to face east.