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MHG2735 - Cup Marked Stone - Kineras Farm

Summary

A cup marked stone near Kineras Farm.

Type and Period (1)

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Full Description

There is a cup-marked stone a little to the south of the farm of Kineras. The stone is a slab of tough grey gneiss containing mica, with a rounded surface, lying flat on the ground and partly imbedded. It contains 43 distinct cups, three pairs of which are connected by grooves.
W Jolly 1882

This cup marked stone is at NH 46774007. It measures 1.5metres long by 1.1. metres broad and is as described by Jolly. The cup marks vary in size from 3" in diameter by 2" deep, to 1 1/2" in diameter by 3/4" deep, but there is now no trace of any pairs joined by grooves. Surveyed at 1/2500.
Visited by OS (R D) 18 December 1964

This panel was recorded as part of the ScRAP (Scotland’s Rock Art project) by members of NoSAS in March 2019. Approx 4kms southwest of the centre of Kiltarlity a broad ridge, a druim, runs in a southwest direction between the line of the Beauly River and Strathglass to the northwest and the smaller Allt an Loin to the southeast. This ridge is extensively farmed as the crofting community of Kinerras, mostly as pasture. There are areas of woodland amongst the fields. Access to the field in which this stone lies is from the east, from Kinerras Farm, in particular No.6 Kinerras. Across a field, through a gate, is a field of rough pasture the northern part of which has been fenced off and contains rank bracken. Two tumbled stone-and-turf dykes run parallel in a WSW-ENE direction, about 20m apart starting just within the gate, abutting the unfenced woodland. The stone was hidden in the bracken, lying about 5m north of the middle of the southern dyke. There is another cup-marked stone, the Nine Hole Stone (Canmore ID 12327), in a field of close-cropped pasture, approx. 150m to the SW, across a deer fence. The crofting community of Culburnie with three Clava type cairns (Canmore ID's 12397, 12388, 12391) lies three kms to the northeast. This is a landscape with many pre-historic archaeological features of settlement and agriculture. Both cups were first recorded by William Jolly in an article in the Proceedings of the Scottish Archaeological Society in 1882 (PSAS, 1882, vol 16, pp 300-401).

Lying flat on the ground, initially completely covered in bracken, this rounded hump-back stone is 1.6m NS by 1.1 eastwest. It rises to a height of 0.3m, just south of it's midpoint. Initially, after removing the moist bracken, the surface of the stone appeared blacky-brown, which dulled as it dried out. The stone has the form of a rounded almost symmetrical humpack, with the main carved area in the centre of the panel. Although there is a band of cups eastwest across the middle of the stone, there is a fine rosette of cups on the east facing surface of the panel as it slopes down to the ground. There are at least 43 cups on the surface of the rock, with three of the cups, labelled A, B & C on the sketch, seeming to be the centre of rosettes of other cups. These three also have prominent bossed edges or shoulders, and are deeper than the others, approx. 4-5cms. Cup A, on the east-facing aspect of the panel, is surrounded by 10 cups, in a non-symmetrical pattern. Cup B has the most prominent bossing, and has a line of 6 cups to the south. Cup C is surrounded by 10 cups in almost a circle. William Jolly in 1882 identified dumb-bell links between some of the cups. These were not identified subsequently by the OS in 1964, nor on this visit. <1>

NGR adjusted based on 2020 vertical aerial photographs. <2>

Sources/Archives (4)

Map

Location

Grid reference	Centred NH 4676 4008 (10m by 10m) (2 map features)
Map sheet	NH44SE
Civil Parish	KILTARLITY AND CONVINTH
Geographical Area	INVERNESS

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External Links (2)