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Robbed cairns. Another myth?
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rockhopper
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Re: Robbed cairns. Another myth?
Mar 25, 2012, 20:24
GLADMAN wrote:
[quote="thesweetcheat"]Also, much of the robbing occurred back in prehistoric times. I suspect many an iron age rampart/reave/pound etc re-used material from nearby cairns, once the original significance of the mound was forgotten over a couple of thousand years.


Not so sure about this, SC. There are quite a number of examples - Foel Dygarn in the Preselis being perhaps the most obvious I've seen - where the preceding monument has been scrupulously respected within the Iron Age ramparts.. you'd have thought in Foel Drygarn's case that three great piles of stone would have been a touch for the builders of drystone ramparts. Also, retaining cairns and long/round barrows (e.g within Hambledon, Cley Hill etc) would have been detrimental to the area of available living space... so it follows that there must have been a very good reason to leave them as they were.


There are examples here in Waterford that support that. A couple of cairns in a field only 15 feet from a large drystone wall were left there when the wall was built. Whoever built the wall obviously had respect for the cairns, and were afraid/prohibited by custom to remove them. I'm surprised they're still there, as they're not in the SMR, and could be JCB'd in minutes.
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Re: Robbed cairns. Another myth? (GLADMAN)
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