by Jonathan Wordsworth
The following is an addendum to the previous Carn Glas blog post of July 2023.
It took two more days of work in August to clear the remaining gorse scrub off the cairn to reveal the monument in its glory. With funding from Historic Environment Scotland we were able to get contractors to shred much of the cut waste, though a substantial amount of gorse remains outside the cairn on the east side.
We were fortunate to get Andy Hickie to fly his drone over the cleaned monument and as the photo above shows, this highlights the prominent position of the cairn overlooking the Moray Firth and with views to the hills north of the Great Glen and south to the Monadhliaths. This view is largely obscured by modern conifer plantations today but it now shows the significance of the monument’s siting in Neolithic times. No new details on the construction of cairns were visible on the ground in addition to that previously recorded by Henshall and Ritchie, but skilled processing of his aerial images by Andy Hickie has revealed the profile of this monument. (See also the recent Current Archaeology article on Carn Glas, featuring Jonathan’s text and Andy’s images. A transcription of the text from Henshall & Ritchie can be downloaded here).
NOSAS Archaeology Blog 