Nether Largie Mid Cairn

Nether Largie Mid Cairn stands near the centre of the Kilmartin Glen linear cemetery, a remarkable line of burial monuments that runs for more than three miles south-south-west of Kilmartin village. Five cairns survive along this alignment, and the Mid Cairn holds the middle position, set between the Nether Largie North Cairn to one side and, to the other, the far older Neolithic chambered cairn of Nether Largie South, thought to date to around 4000 BC. The Mid Cairn itself belongs to the Bronze Age. It measures roughly 30 metres across and once rose to about 3 metres in height, though much of its stone was carted away for roadbuilding in the early twentieth century, shortly before the site was first excavated in 1929. Even so, the kerbstones that marked the outer edge of the mound can still be traced, and two stone cists survive within, their slabs fitted together with neatly grooved joints. The southern cist (a stone-lined burial box) carries prehistoric markings: shallow cup marks and the carved outline of an axehead. Today the cairn is protected as a scheduled monument, one link in a chain of tombs that makes Kilmartin Glen one of Scotland’s densest prehistoric landscapes.