The area around it shows evidence of human activity across multiple periods, including a number of cairns that document the use of the landscape as a place where the dead were commemorated and interred.

The specific cairn that contained the Loch Borralie skeletons is rectangular in form — a shape that distinguishes it from the more common round cairns of the Neolithic period and places it within the Iron Age funerary tradition of the region.

The Iron Age in Scotland is conventionally dated from around 800 BCE to the arrival of Roman power in southern Britain in the first century CE, though the cultural and social changes associated with the end of the Iron Age proceeded differently in different parts of the country.

In the far north of Scotland, beyond the effective reach of Roman administration, Iron Age culture persisted in recognizable forms well into the first millennium CE.