The final day of trudging around Brown Hill, dutifully noting the remains of Bronze Age cairnfields, settlements, and funerary monuments. By Monday, the moor must be left undisturbed so the Grouse can multiply, ensuring there are enough targets for the guns on the Glorious Twelfth.
The weather, as ever, was obliging. No rain was forecast, so naturally, we were treated to a hailstorm, followed by a stiff wind for the rest of the day. At least the sun deigned to appear.
The photograph captures one of the more obvious cairns, though “obvious” is a relative term. It barely reaches half a metre in height. It could be a burial cairn, long since plundered by Victorian antiquarians, or merely a clearance cairn, its stones repurposed over the centuries for walls, houses, defensive structures, drainage ditches, and roads. Clearance cairns were usually relegated to the less useful parts of the landscape—steep slopes, woodland edges, field corners, and anywhere a large earthfast boulder had been inconveniently placed.
Some cairns appear to align in straight lines. Are these remnants of ancient field boundaries, a linear clearance cairn, or simply the human tendency to find patterns where none exist? We await the survey report with anticipation.
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