Great to get to the bottom of the original location of this stone - bravo! We are hoping to scan it next year for the OG(H)AM project. I'll keep you posted.
Thank you! I can't really claim any credit, though, as it was all down to some great detective work by Susan Bennett at Elgin Museum. I did actually mean to write about the inscription in this post, but it got too long. Exciting that new scans are going to be made - will you be looking at Rodney's Stone too?
Fabulous Fiona! A couple of thoughts in reading... first is that it is rare to find a cross stone that isn't at a church, it does happen, but rarely, suggesting something else is being marked. Second, that with an ogham it suggests we might be at a burial ground of significance. Then the place you've landed on is only a couple of hundred metres to the south of that massive burial ground where 100s of bodies were found, said to be 'Neolithic' but that is doubtful. So could the cross be marking this burial event? What's then interesting is that the actual location of the burial ground is well, sort of rubbery as well. Perhaps you should have a go at locating that next? :-)
Thanks Helen, yes I thought the same about a church - that's why I initially thought it would have made more sense for the cross to have come from Kirkhill, even though Kirkhill is a Scots name and therefore much later in date. But then I think about Sueno's Stone, which also has no association with a church, but is clearly on a routeway (actually probably at the junction of two routeways - one going towards Elgin/Birnie and one towards Burghead/Kinneddar). I also felt the cross and the Easterton site might be related (and Katherine Forsyth also suggested as much in her PhD thesis). The Easterton cist burial *seems* culturally pre-Christian (grave goods, Class I symbol stone, cist not lying east-west), but it does appear to have been placed next to this earlier burial, which has been judged to be the remains of a neolithic burial mound, perhaps flattened by sand-blow and ploughing. I wonder if it is a case of the pre-Christian Picts choosing a burial site near to (and respecting) an older burial site, and then the cross site similarly respecting the earlier Pictish burial? But I'm absolutely out of my depth on this topic so will defer to those with more knowledge! (And I will write more about Easterton at some point; it's a fascinating site for sure.)
I'm no expert in burials either, but I'm struggling to think of any Neolithic burial ground with 100s of bodies laid out in rows. Canmore 16257 says: "Stone and flint implements, including leaf, lozenge and barbed and tanged arrowheads and polished stone axes, were found in 1894 all over the field in which the burial-ground occurred ... These indicate that the occupation period included both Neolithic and Bronze Age." But then Canmore 16253 : "Scrapers and worked flints were found among the burials, but these are probably intrusive, deriving from the spread of stone implements all over the field". In other words, the author of this statement is suggesting the burials aren't from the same period. For me, I'd think it is early medieval, but I could be wrong - we really need those boxes of bones! But the whole thing does show an incredible persistence of attention to this spot between the two lochs down through millennia, doesn't it.
Great to get to the bottom of the original location of this stone - bravo! We are hoping to scan it next year for the OG(H)AM project. I'll keep you posted.
Thank you! I can't really claim any credit, though, as it was all down to some great detective work by Susan Bennett at Elgin Museum. I did actually mean to write about the inscription in this post, but it got too long. Exciting that new scans are going to be made - will you be looking at Rodney's Stone too?
Yes, that's on the list too.
Fabulous Fiona! A couple of thoughts in reading... first is that it is rare to find a cross stone that isn't at a church, it does happen, but rarely, suggesting something else is being marked. Second, that with an ogham it suggests we might be at a burial ground of significance. Then the place you've landed on is only a couple of hundred metres to the south of that massive burial ground where 100s of bodies were found, said to be 'Neolithic' but that is doubtful. So could the cross be marking this burial event? What's then interesting is that the actual location of the burial ground is well, sort of rubbery as well. Perhaps you should have a go at locating that next? :-)
Thanks Helen, yes I thought the same about a church - that's why I initially thought it would have made more sense for the cross to have come from Kirkhill, even though Kirkhill is a Scots name and therefore much later in date. But then I think about Sueno's Stone, which also has no association with a church, but is clearly on a routeway (actually probably at the junction of two routeways - one going towards Elgin/Birnie and one towards Burghead/Kinneddar). I also felt the cross and the Easterton site might be related (and Katherine Forsyth also suggested as much in her PhD thesis). The Easterton cist burial *seems* culturally pre-Christian (grave goods, Class I symbol stone, cist not lying east-west), but it does appear to have been placed next to this earlier burial, which has been judged to be the remains of a neolithic burial mound, perhaps flattened by sand-blow and ploughing. I wonder if it is a case of the pre-Christian Picts choosing a burial site near to (and respecting) an older burial site, and then the cross site similarly respecting the earlier Pictish burial? But I'm absolutely out of my depth on this topic so will defer to those with more knowledge! (And I will write more about Easterton at some point; it's a fascinating site for sure.)
I'm no expert in burials either, but I'm struggling to think of any Neolithic burial ground with 100s of bodies laid out in rows. Canmore 16257 says: "Stone and flint implements, including leaf, lozenge and barbed and tanged arrowheads and polished stone axes, were found in 1894 all over the field in which the burial-ground occurred ... These indicate that the occupation period included both Neolithic and Bronze Age." But then Canmore 16253 : "Scrapers and worked flints were found among the burials, but these are probably intrusive, deriving from the spread of stone implements all over the field". In other words, the author of this statement is suggesting the burials aren't from the same period. For me, I'd think it is early medieval, but I could be wrong - we really need those boxes of bones! But the whole thing does show an incredible persistence of attention to this spot between the two lochs down through millennia, doesn't it.