In the Bronze Age, some people, at least, were buried in small, stone-lined graves or ‘short cists’ (kist is Scots for chest). Farmers in Grampian, during ploughing or field draining still discover these sites. Sometimes these cists were also placed under round cairns. These cairns vary in height or size. The earlier burial places were long mounds.

Obviously, burial sites - but cremation burial was also common, sometimes with scattered fragments inside a stone circle or by placing a pottery urn in a natural knoll or on top of a cairn. But archaeologists also think that not everyone was given this special treatment. Who were these people that their deaths were marked in this distinguished way?

Over the centuries, several of these sites have been disturbed or have been completely destroyed, by stone-robbing or other farming activity, so that Bronze Age cairn cemeteries are uncommon. However, those that remain are evocative places, with a definite atmosphere.