Discussion

Abstract

The excavations at Ferndale have identified a complex of three cists, two of which were securely associated with a barrow and contained cremated human remains. Dates obtained from cremated bone from these cists demonstrate that the occupants of the cists died in the first quarter of the second millennium BC; as such, the mound and cists fit into an increasingly well-defined Orcadian tradition of cist burials covered by artificial mounds, although this is an apparently early example. The third cist differs in several important respects from the other two, and indeed from the majority of excavated cists in Orkney.