This is an isolated example of a small cairn. Such piles of stones were gathered to clear the ground for agriculture, but many individual cairns have been shown to be burial monuments, often covering cremated remains dating to the Bronze Age.
Bronze Age cemeteries have recently been excavated in the Crawford area and dated to over 4000 years ago. Other cairns in Clydesdale have been dated to the Neolithic Period, about a thousand years earlier.
There are several thousand small cairns recorded in Upper Clydesdale, sometimes they are found in groups of between 50 to a 100, but more often in lesser numbers.
The beaker illustrated here is a fine example of the type of pottery used in funerary rites in the Bronze Age, it was found last century near Crawford with a bronze ring which may have been a bracelet.
Barbed and tanged arrow-heads are also characteristic of the period and one was recently found beside burial cairns at Crawford.
Please re-trace your steps to the last way marker and follow the markers back to the car park. We hope you have enjoyed your visit to the ancient landscape of Glenochar and we recommend a visit to Biggar Museums where much of the history and archaeology of the area is exhibited using a range of scale models, tableau, and objects from the past.
