Monument record MHG8590 - Cairnfield, Cartomie Wood

NH78NW 22 710 853
Cairnfield, Cartomie Wood: A group of about thirty small cairns, which measure up to 3.5m in diameter and 0.5m in height, is visible 300m E of Balblair distillery and immediately N of the railway. RCAHMS 1979, visited 1977. <1>

Field clearance heaps of an uncertain age in a pasture field.
Visited by OS (J B) 23 February 1981.

Partial excavation of two of the cairns in January 2010 revealed a buried land surface lying beneath the features. Fragments of possibly worked flint, including a blade fragment and a possible scraper, were recovered from beneath one of the cairns at the interface between this land surface and the natural subsoil. Coarse pottery of probable Iron Age date was recovered from within the cairn material and from the land surface beneath.
Several shallow linear marks were observed cut into the subsoil. These were interpreted by the excavator as marks from 20th-century subsoil ploughing but given the evidence it is more likely that these are marks from prehistoric cultivation. Similar marks and a buried land surface were also noted beneath a third cairn that was mechanically excavated under archaeological supervision. The cairns/mounds themselves were not primarily stony in their composition, but largely consisted of redeposited subsoil.
Eight further cairns were examined in the course of a watching brief during topsoil stripping. All were low, fairly indistinct features which were only partially disturbed by the works. All of the features proved to be low, amorphous mounds overlying the natural orange-brown subsoil. The same buried land surface was noted beneath some of the mounds but no finds were recovered.
Two linear features were also noted during the topsoil stripping, one of which was overlain by two of the mounds. The features comprised low banks composed of stones within an earth-subsoil matrix.
The works appear to have established that these features were not burial cairns, and while a probable prehistoric land surface was identified beneath many of the mounds, the date of the mounds themselves remains inconclusive. <2><3>