NAR SH36NE8

A well preserved kerbed cairn, probably Bronze Age, now almost entirely buried by wind blown sand. The site was excavated in 1956 and again in 1974.
It was discovered that the cairn overlay a layer containing many worked flint 'microliths' - small blades. Radio carbon determinations from burnt hazelnut fragments in this layer point to a date in the seventh millennium BC, in the Mesolithic period. The flints are believed to have come from glacial drift in the river valleys, the site being far from the sea at this time.
The cairn is some 8.0m in diameter and is thought to have risen no higher than the upright stones of the kerb or peristalith, forming a level drum or platform. The kerb stones generally rose no higher than about 1.0m and were arranged with some architectural exactitude. Towards the centre of the cairn is a stone lined grave or cist, 2.0m by 1.0m. This lies within a D-plan stone setting linked to the outer kerb by radial stone settings.
The site is thought to have been overcome by blown sand towards the end of the medieval period.

Source: Houlder in the Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 23 (1957), 228-9
White in Archaeologia Cambrensis 127 (1978), 16-39

John Wiles 15.08.07