More information : (Area SD 135958)
Settlement (NR) (Site of) (NAT)
Cairns (NR) (1)
At the western end of Barnscar settlement, are the remains of small enclosures and hut-circles occupying three quarters of an acre, and consisting of stone and earth banks. There are various banks and walls generally running parallel to the ridge, and the purpose of their erection is unknown. Some 400 cairns, diameters varying from 5 to 25 feet and generally of low elevation, are scattered irregularly over the ridge east of the "village" to a point within a mile of Devoch Water. Circa 1890 Lord Muncaster excavated some 14 cairns, and cinerary urns in an inverted position, burnt bones and pottery sherds were found. Two of the urns (now in the Museum of Archaeology, Cambridge) are M.B.A. tripartite overhanging rim type. A hoard of silver coins of unknown date was found in one of the huts c. 1730 and claimed by the Lord of the Manor. (2-3)
Scheduled. (4)
"The excavation of ten further cairns in 1957-8 failed to produce evidence of burials, but indicated that they were built structures and not merely field clearance heaps." (5)
Excavation report. (6)
The enclosure and hut circles noted by Hyam constiture a small RB type settlement of, in all, three sub-oval rubble enclosures, two with internal dividing walls, and five hut sites. One of the enclosures contains the site of a rectangular building, which is probably of later date. The settlement lies on the western fringe of an earlier field system, covering an area some 800m x 500m, and denoted by several hundred clearance heaps, fragmentary field walls and traces of lynchets. None of the excavated cairns can be identified with certainty, but five larger than average, consolidated mounds (A-E on enlargement) probably figure among them. There is no trace of settlement associated with this system apart from one possible hut site at SD 13649596. Settlement and cairns surveyed at 1:10000 and 1:2500. (7)
Listed by Challis and Harding as an extensive Bronze Age settlement. (8)
Groups of small cairns.
In North West England, groups of small cairns occur typically between the 400 and 800ft contours, the greatest number being on the southern and western fells of the Lake District. They are a type of site generally characteristic of the archaeology of the highland zone in Britain. Although described in the past as 'Cairn Fields', and frequently currently published as 'Field Systems', they are now best described as 'Groups of small cairns' and published as 'Cairns'. This avoids any implication of function, and follows the recent practice of the RCHM's for Scotland and Wales in listing and describing similar sites in Lanarkshire and Glamorgan.
In Cumbria, as in Lanarkshire and Glamorgan, most of the groups of small cairns, particularly those lying well above the altitudiual limits of known Romano-British and Medieval occupation, have been interpreted as being of Bronze Age date (11-12). The only available C14 dates for charcoal buried beneath cairns, for Birrel Sike, are also of the mid 2nd millenium BC (13). Palaeobotanical research indicates that on the south western fells, this same period coincided with a permanent change from oak forest to open grassland. Pollen diagrams from Burnmoor Tarn (see NY 10 SE 4) and Devoke Water (see SD 19 NE 4, 8) show no evidence of cereal or wheat pollen in this period (14). If of Bronze Age date, the groups of small cairns cannot therefore be associated with arable cultivation, and other hypotheses for their function must be formulated. (9-14)
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