Monument record 14599 - Aird ma Ruibhe, Berneray, Harris

The cairn measured 3m x 3m and stood about 0.4m high. The kerb on the south-eastern and north-eastern edges was formed of slabs of gneiss, with their worked edges froming a good facing to the structure. The kerb was between one and two courses thick, to compensate for variations in the original ground surface. The eastern corner of the cairn was well formed, but the northern and southern corners both appeared to have sotnes missing and showed signs of disturbance. The kerb on the northern-western edge was only partially exposed, but appeared to be of a similar slab-built construction.
On the south-western edge, the builders of the cairn had used outcropping bedrock instead of gneiss slabs to form a retaining wall for the rest of the cairn.
A discrete patch of black/brown soil was revealed at the southern corner of the cairn. It was thought to be a post-hole or stone-hole.
The main body of the cairn comprised a low mound of sub-rounded and angular gneiss and quartz fragments. With a few exceptions, none of the stones were water worn. These stones were within a soil matrix of dark brown sandy silt, and overlay the top kerb stones. Some of the larger stones in the centre of the cairn were thought to relate to a grave cist, running north-south.
Downes & Badcock 1999, 48-53

Probable Pictish cairn.
KM 26/10/2023.

Jane Downes & Anna Badcock, 1999, Berneray Causeway (Unpublished document). SWE41023.