Auchagallon Stone Circle

Auchagallon Stone Circle

Auchagallon Stone Circle
Auchagallon
Isle of Arran
Ayrshire
Scotland
KA27 8HE

Tel: 0131 668 8600
E-Mail: hs.members@scotland.gsi.gov.uk

Web: Auchagallon Stone Circle

About Auchagallon Stone Circle

Auchagallon Stone Circle is An Ancient Burial Place

This ancient burial place dates to about 4,000 years ago. Fifteen upright sandstone slabs lie at the edge of a large stone cairn. Antiquarians digging here in the 19th century found a burial cist in the centre, though they didn’t record what they found in it, if anything. Although the monument is now called a stone circle, it was probably built as a kerbed cairn.

A Kerbed Cairn

Auchagallon was probably built in the early Bronze Age, about 4,000 to 3,200 years ago. It was common then for important people to be buried in a large and impressive kerbed cairn. The body was placed, usually in a crouched position, in a stone-lined burial chamber (cist) beneath the ground. Prestigious objects, such as a decorated food vessel and flint tools, were placed in the cist beside the body. The cist was then covered with an elaborate cairn of stone defined by a kerbed edge.

It is just possible that at Auchagallon, an earlier stone circle was used to form the kerb of the new burial cairn. This is the case at the nearby site of Moss Farm Road, on the track to the Machrie Moor stone circles.

Early Farmers

The kerbed cairn at Auchagallon is one of numerous ancient sites dotted about this part of the island of Arran. It lies within a short distance of the remarkable complex of stone circles and standing stones, burial cairns, ancient houses and field systems that cover Machrie Moor. These sites have been dated by archaeologists to the Neolithic era and Bronze Age, between 5,500 and 3,000 years ago. During that period, our remote ancestors began to abandon their hunter-gathering ways and put down roots. Clearly, the triangular basin of fertile land around Machrie Bay supported a flourishing farming community at this time.

Auchagallon Stone Circle Highlights

•The location – on the slope of a hill overlooking Machrie Bay.
•The kerb-stones – all are of red sandstone, bar two which are a pale grey granite; but why?
•The enclosure wall – walk the circuit that marked the dividing line between the secular and the spiritual worlds 1,400 years ago.