Note 409 — Chapter III
Reading edition
Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot., xxxvi, 1902, pp. 74-181: xxxvii, 1903, pp. 36-67; xxxviii, 1904, pp. 17-81; Journ. Anthr. Inst., xxxii, 1902, pp. 398-406. These cairns have no passages of entrance. Their outline was commonly rectangular, the ground-plan being defined by flagstones, arranged at one end in a semi-circle, the space within which led to a low portal that gave access to the chamber. The latter consisted of two sections, one above the other, of which the lower was built of large lateral slabs, covered by flagstones, and divided by other slabs into compartments, while the upper was formed of small flags laid horizontally.
A chambered cairn of abnormal form in the island of Ronsay, Orkney, which has been described by Sir William Turner (Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot., xxxvii, 1903, pp. 73-82), ‘consisted of a central part and four recesses’ (ib., pp. 74-5, fig. 1); and on its roof were cremation cists ‘quite different in character from the short cists so frequently found in Scotland’ (ib., p. 79).