Ballmalloch,chambered cairn

Scotland, and above all Orkney and Caithness, has many Neolithic tombs. A chambered cairn is a stone mound over one or more burial chambers, entered by a passage. Maeshowe on Mainland Orkney was probably built around 2800 BCE, and gives its name to the Maeshowe type of cairn, which is limited to Orkney; its entrance passage is about 11 metres long, and sunlight enters it at the winter solstice and reaches the rear wall of the chamber. It is part of the Heart of Neolithic Orkney World Heritage Site. In the twelfth century Norse visitors broke in through the roof and left runic inscriptions inside. The full article, “Orkney, Caithness and Scottish chambered cairns”, follows below under About this kind of monument.

The Atlas shows 4000 BCE to 2500 BCE for this site, but that is a regional estimate for this kind of monument, not a date for this particular chambered cairn. No excavation, radiocarbon sample or other measurement is recorded for it, so the real age could fall anywhere within the range, or outside it.

The range rests on this regional background (source: the Wikipedia article “Chambered cairn”): Stone-chambered cairns appear in the early Neolithic (4000-3300 BC) and in the later Neolithic (3300-2500 BC) massive circular enclosures emerge.