Documents

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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

  SM12469_Legal Doc

  Download(https://portal.historicenvironment.scot/document/600014262)

Summary

Description

The monument known as the Winding Cairn comprises a prehistoric burial cairn, approximately 4500 to 3500 years old. It lies in rough pasture 1145m to the N of Harelawside at a height of around 185m above sea level, immediately to the south of a conifer plantation where it is enclosed within a small rectangular post-and-wire enclosure.

The monument comprises a turf-covered ring of cairn material that is approximately 7m thick, up to 0.5m in height and around 26m in diameter. Quarrying in the first half of the 19th century removed the interior of the cairn, an event reported to have begun in 1829 and that revealed fragments of bone. The visible gap in the W quadrant of the cairn is likely to have been created to allow access for the removal of stones. What may be the remains of a kerb is visible around the base of the N quadrant of the cairn. A small section of cairn material is exposed through the turf on the SSW quadrant of the cairn. An area of heaped stone partially overlies the cairn's N quadrant and may represent modern field clearance material. Immediately to the SW of the cairn is an area of levelled ground where a small spread of stones, smaller than those heaped within the cairn, is visible through the turf.

The area to be scheduled is sub-circular on plan, to include the remains described and an area around within which evidence relating to their construction and use may survive, as shown in red on the accompanying map. The scheduled area excludes the above-ground elements of the post-and-wire fence enclosing the cairn to allow for their maintenance.

Statement of National Importance

Cultural Significance

The monument's archaeological significance can be expressed as follows:

Intrinsic characteristics

Despite visible evidence of 19th-century quarrying, the monument remains a sizeable upstanding feature and represents a good example of a prehistoric burial cairn with some characteristics of its original form. The cairn's circular shape suggests that it may date to the Bronze Age (approximately 4500-3500 years old). Given the area still covered by cairn material, it is likely that the monument covered more than one burial and may have been enlarged to cover later interments. Although quarrying may have disturbed traces of the original burials and funerary structures near the centre of the cairn, potential remains for the survival of later graves in and around the cairn. As the cairn is likely to have presented an obstacle to cultivation, the area around the cairn may not have been significantly disturbed. The surviving cairn material may overlie buried soils that could provide environmental evidence, illustrating the character of the local landscape in the Bronze Age. The monument offers the potential to further our understanding of Bronze-Age funerary practices and the structural features of large barrows and surrounding banks.

Contextual characteristics

In the Bronze Age, both inhumation (burial of the complete body) and cremation burial techniques were used and remains were usually placed within cists, graves formed from large flat slabs of stone. Some cists were simply covered with a large flat stone and then buried, while others were covered beneath cairns such as the Winding Cairn. In some cases cairns became a focus for later cist-burials that were then covered by more cairn stones.

The Winding Cairn is one of 79 known burial monuments of Bronze-Age date in Berwickshire. Anecdotal evidence, principally antiquarian descriptions, records the destruction of a number of cairns in the local area as a result of agricultural improvements in the 18th and 19th centuries. An antiquarian account of the quarrying at the Winding Cairn, which began in 1829, describes the monument as being 9-10 ft high and covering an area of 805 sq yards before the removal of stones began. This suggests that prehistoric peoples enlarged Winding Cairn over several generations or that it was a site of some significance.

Spatial analysis of this cairn and other burial sites may further our understanding of funerary site location, the structure of society, and the Bronze-Age economy. Information gained from the preservation and study of this site has the potential to help us gain an insight into the wider knowledge of Bronze-Age funerary practices across Scotland.

National Importance

The monument is of national importance because it has an inherent potential to make a significant addition to our understanding of the past, in particular the funerary practices and architecture of the Bronze Age in Scotland. Although the monument has been reduced in size by quarrying, surviving antiquarian accounts record the site as being of significant size and the remaining spread of cairn material is sizeable and retains a visible presence in the landscape. There remains potential for the survival of undisturbed funerary deposits, particularly later graves placed close to the original cairn and covered by cairn stones. The Winding Cairn forms part of a wider prehistoric landscape extending across Coldingham Moor and Penmanshiel Moor. The landscape comprises settlements, field-systems and funerary sites, many of which survive as upstanding features within largely marginal land. The monument has the potential to enhance our knowledge of burial practice within SE Scotland and understand how this relates to wider trends in Scotland and further afield. Skeletal remains and artefacts from burials may inform us about wider prehistoric society, how people lived, where they came from and who they had contact with. The old ground surfaces sealed by the monument can provide information about what the contemporary environment looked like and how it was being managed by the prehistoric farmers who buried their dead here. Its loss would impede our ability to understand the placing of such monuments within the landscape, as well as our knowledge of Bronze-Age social structure and economy.

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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