A combination of modern research and antiquarian 'excavation' looks like confirming that a massive mound to the west of the Ring o' Brodgar (Orkney, Scotland) was not a chambered cairn. Salt Knowe lies at the end of a track to the south-west of the stone circle, near the shore of the Stenness loch. Thought to date from between 2500 BCE to 1500 BCE, the mound is perhaps the most striking landscape feature in the area. A Bronze Age burial cist, which is still visible, was found cut into the flattened top of the knowe.
     The mound's sheer size, which is matched only by Maeshowe, led to the suggestion that it might house a similar chambered cairn. However, recent scans of the knowe by Orkney College Geophysics Unit, using ground-penetrating radar, have shown that it appears to be nothing more than a massive mound of earth, with no central structure. This discovery ties in with a letter written to The Orcadian in 1861 by the antiquarian James Farrer. Farrer, who was responsible for excavating Maeshowe, also had a look at the mounds around the Ring of Brodgar. In his letter he wrote: "Certain it is that no stones of large dimensions are found at any depth in either of the tumuli. In each of them I have made an excavation, and find remains of animal, but no human bones; in each also the bones are chiefly in the upper part of the mound. The workmen have in both instances penetrated the subsoil, to the depth of 22 feet from the top and over an area of nine feet square in the tumulus…"
     Farrer's investigation has intrigued local archaeologist Nick Card of ORCA, who has long wondered about the significance of the mound. Nick said: "His findings, or rather lack of them, would seem to support the theory that it is neither a Bronze Age barrow or chambered tomb, as I had suspected, and may be the Orkney equivalent of Silbury Hill. Once again this emphasises the close links between these areas 4,500 years ago. At least one other similar mound has been recognised in Scotland at Dunragit in Dumfriesshire, in association with another Neolithic ritual complex."
     Silbury Hill, in Wiltshire, is the largest man-made mound in Europe. The latest theory on the monument was that it was a ceremonial mound – something confirmed by the lack of domestic, or indeed ritual, debris in the vicinity. Embedded in the chalk were large sarsen stones – similar to those at Stonehenge. So rather than being a burial chamber, Silbury, it is suggested, was a massive 'symbolic mausoleum'. Do we have the same situation at Salt Knowe? Was the mound erected to match the shape and dimensions of the nearby Maeshowe? But instead of being constructed as a house of the dead, was Salt Knowe a dwelling for the ancestors? Given the idea that the stone circle may have represented the dead, it's an intriguing possibility.

Source: Orkneyjar (10 April 2008)