HIGHLAND STONE AGE BUILDINGS TO GO ON SHOW
• Massive Neolithic structures to make public appearance
• Survey reveals hundreds more ancient sites
• 5,000 year-old ritual monuments depicted
Picture/Graphic Attached (Caption at bottom of release)
A group of seven massive Neolithic cairns near a Caithness windfarm development is being unveiled in a high-tech survey and interpretation project for the local community, tourists and worldwide researchers.
The well-preserved cluster of 5,000-year-old ‘horned cairns’ at the Hill of Shebster, near Thurso, will be depicted in onsite visual displays, with provision of a visitors’ car park and development of a dedicated website.
It is part of a £100,000 archaeology project that has also revealed 300 new Bronze Age and Iron Age sites in a large section of West Caithness.
The project, funded by Baillie Wind Farm, involved Scotland’s first large-scale survey using LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging), an advanced technology that can map ancient sites in fine detail and reveal three-dimensional visual images of their shapes, size and content.
The wind farm developers are also constructing a car park close to the huge Hill of Shebster cairns – measuring well over 60 metres in length – with a link-path providing public access to nine kilometres of tracks that will connect the 21 turbines at Baillie.
Consultant Dr Graeme Cavers, of Edinburgh-based AOC Archaeology, said: “The Shebster area is an unusually good example of a well-preserved cluster of sites. They are essentially burial and ritual monuments, much like the chapels and shrines of more recent times, and each of them is likely to have been used exclusively by individual local groups or communities.”
Stone Age horned cairns have projecting arms of stone wall at their entrances, creating small courtyard areas in which ceremonially buried artefacts are sometimes found. The wider survey covered the area from Dounreay in the north to Loch Calder in the south and the 300 previously unknown features detected are mainly hut-circle settlements from the Bronze Age (1800 to c.600 BC) and Iron Ages (c.600 BC to 500 AD).
Dr Cavers added: “The survey makes an invaluable contribution to the archaeological record of Caithness, and is really the first large scale survey of its kind undertaken in Scotland.”
Production of the Shebster cairns onsite interpretation materials is under way, along with content for Baillie’s own website, and is expected to be in place within about two months when the car park is also created.
Baillie Wind Farm is a joint venture between European energy company Statkraft and local landowners Tom and Steve Pottinger.
Company director Tom Pottinger said: “Though the cairns are not on the windfarm site itself, our aim is to ensure that they are preserved and interpreted for local people, visitors and researchers. We are putting in a sizeable car park for about 12 cars close by them, along with a short linking path giving access for walking or cycling on Baillie’s extensive windfarm tracks.”
Earlier this month, the company revealed that the windfarm development had moved ahead of schedule, with the bases for its 21 turbines completed nearly three months early, and contractors set to move in to lay several miles of cables before the towers go up in a few months’ time.
Sergio Castedo, Director of Statkraft UK and Baillie Wind Farm, said: “This project is yielding significant local economic and community benefits in Caithness, as well as contributing to national and global environmental aims through generation of renewable power.”
Once operational, Baillie will provide a West Caithness Community Fund yielding an expected £100,000 annually for local initiatives, plus a further £25,000 per annum for a new business development fund to be managed by the Caithness Chamber of Commerce.
Its maximum generation capacity of more than 50 megawatts is sufficient to power several thousand homes.
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Picture Caption: The anatomy of a horned cairn, showing the scale of construction, the internal chamber and ceremonial courtyard area at the entrance. Image based on a reconstruction drawing by AOC Archaeological Group, Edinburgh.
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