Vestra Fiold Four Mounds, 380m SW of Vestrafiold Sandwick, Shetland Islands, Scotland, UK

Scheduled Monument Description

© Crown Copyright text courtesy of Historic Environment Scotland, reprinted under the Open Government License.

The monument comprises the remains of four barrows (burial mounds) dating probably from the Bronze Age (between 2000 BC and 800 BC). The monument is visible as a line of four upstanding, circular, turf-covered earthen mounds. The mounds vary in size between 8m and 15m in diameter and range in height from 0.7m to 1.25m. The monument occupies a conspicuous location on a ridge at 120m above OD, with extensive views to the E. The monument was first scheduled in 1938, but the documentation did not meet modern standards: the present amendment rectifies this.

The scheduled area consists of a rectangular area 100m NNE-SSW by 40m WNW-ESE. It includes the remains described above and an area around them within which evidence relating to the monument's construction, use and abandonment is expected to survive, as shown in red on the accompanying map. The scheduling specifically excludes the above-ground elements of the post-and-wire fence that crosses the scheduled area.

Scheduled Monument Statement of Significance

© Crown Copyright text courtesy of Historic Environment Scotland, reprinted under the Open Government License.

The monument is of national importance because of its potential to make a significant addition to our understanding of funerary and burial practice in the Bronze Age. Burial mounds and earthen barrows form an important and relatively widespread element of Orkney's Bronze Age landscape, and provide evidence for the major social and economic changes which took place during this period. The mounds at Vestra Fiold retain their field characteristics to a marked degree and are significant examples of their type. Excavation of similar sites elsewhere in Orkney demonstrates that these mounds have the potential to contain one or more burials and associated features, such as the remains of funeral pyres or mortuary structures. Orkney's barrows are unusual in Scotland, and important within a British context, as the majority are earthen mounds as opposed to stone-built cairns. The significance of the Vestra Fiold group is enhanced by its association with a wider landscape of Bronze Age burial monuments located around Vestra Fiold hill and the west coast of Orkney Mainland, which has one of the most important concentrations of such monuments in Orkney. Our understanding of the dating, form, function and distribution of Bronze Age barrows would be diminished if this monument was to be lost or damaged.

Scheduled Monument References

© Crown Copyright text courtesy of Historic Environment Scotland, reprinted under the Open Government License.

RCAHMS records the monument as HY22SW 9.

References

Downes, J 1995, 'Linga Fold', Current Archaeology 142, 396-399.

Downes, J 1997, The Orkney Barrows Project survey results and management strategy (unpubl rep to Historic Scotland: ARCUS, University of Sheffield).

Downes, J 1999, 'Orkney Barrows Project', Current Archaeology 165, 324-327.

RCAHMS 1946, The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland. Twelfth report with an inventory of the ancient monuments of Orkney and Shetland, 3v, Edinburgh, 259, no 686.

Towrie, S 2013, The Knowes o' Trotty, http://www.orkneyjar.com/history/knowestrotty/ [accessed August 2013].