Two People in a Cairn of Stones

The rectangular cairn near Loch Borralie contained the partial skeletal remains of two individuals.

They were buried close together, with their heads oriented to the east.

The survival of the bone — relatively good by the standards of Iron Age human remains in Britain — was the result of the specific environmental conditions of northwest Scotland, where the chemistry of the soil and the relatively stable cool temperatures support the preservation of bone material that would have dissolved or degraded in more acidic or warmer soils.

The first individual, designated Individual 1 in the published study, was an adult female who had been over thirty years old at the time of her death.