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Maes Howe Scotland, UK

Path to the Cairn
Walking path from the visitor's center to the Maeshowe chambered cairn, c. 3000 BCE. Orkney, Scotland. Image credit: Holly Hayes

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

The monument is a chambered cairn on a large platform, and a large surrounding flat-bottomed ditch, an outer turf bank and associated and earlier remains, all known collectively as Maes Howe.

The monument includes the chambered tomb and the large platform and ditch, the turf bank and the remains of other features including stone-sockets. It also includes other remains associated with this and other phases of use of the area for ritual and ceremonial purposes.

The area to be scheduled is approximately elliptical on plan. It measures 130m NW-SE or thereabouts, and 120m NE-SW or thereabouts. It comprises the area in the care of the Secretary of State for Scotland and a band of ground 10m across outside the outermost edges of the area in state care. It excludes all existing modern fences.

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

The monument is of national importance, indeed international importance, as part of the core of a mainly third and second millennium BC (although including elements which may be of late 4th millennium BC date) ritual landscape. The architecturally exceptionally fine chambered tomb with its platform and ditch is important both as a field monument and because excavation has shown that it contains important information about the religious, ceremonial and funerary practices of late fourth, third and second millennium societies.

The monument is also important because other monuments within a broader area extending to the western horizons seem to have been sited in relationship to it. The monument is of additional importance because the chamber contains (together with other carvings) the finest collection of stone-carved Norse runes in the world.

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

RCAHMS records the monument as HY 31 SW 1.

References:

Davidson, J L and Henshall, A S, 1989, The chambered cairns of Orkney: an inventory of the structures and their contents, Edinburgh, 142-6, no. 36.

Renfrew, A C, 1978, Investigations in Orkney, Society of Antiquaries of London, Research Report No. 38, London, 23-6, 31-8.

https://www.historicenvironment.scot/visit-a-place/places/maeshowe-chambered-cairn