Monument record 1160 - VALLAQUIE, ORONSAY

NF87NW 19 848 763.

(Area: NF 849 763) A group of about 20 small and much ruined cairns is situated at the NE end of Oronsay Island, which lies west of Vallaquie. The site is upon a stony slope immediately to the NW of the discovery of a gold hoard (NF87NW 18).
The cairns were evidently once enclosed within a drystone dyke which is still traceable on the N and W, and very few cairns are to be seen outside this boundary.
A dozen flint flakes, including scrapers, and many fragments of pottery were found on the surface near the largest cairn.
E Beveridge 1911.

There is now only one cairn of the twenty mentioned above, in the area centred at NF 848 763. It is on the highest point of a natural rock outcrop and measures 3.0m in diameter by 0.5m high.
The remainder of the cairns are ruinous, but slight traces of the enclosure wall are still visible in the N. These cairns appear to be field clearance heaps, associated with nearby cultivation, and the pottery fragments, etc., may have come from the nearby midden at NF 8489 7597 (NF87NW 23).
Visited by OS (R D) 24 June 1965.

Erskine Beveridge, 1911, North Uist: its archaeology and topography, 266-7 (Bibliographic reference). SWE12876.