At Balnuaran of Clava, Nairnshire, south of the River Nairn and east of Inverness, there is a group of Bronze Age monuments known as the Clava Cairns, of which there are two kinds, passage tombs and ring cairns that date 2500-2000 BC. The three tombs at Clava are arranged in a straight line sitting northeast/southwest to the midwinter solstice with a ring cairn positioned between two passage tombs.
Metal tools first appeared in Scotland about 2500 BC of copper, followed by bronze 2100 BC. Excavations near Sorisdale on the northeast coast of Coll, an island of the Inner Hebrides, Argyllshire, revealed a Bell Beaker grave containing the remains of a young adult dated 2340-2270 BC.
In a cist found at Culduthel, Invernessshire, east of the River Ness and south of Inverness, a Bell Beaker was found along with the remains of an adult man dated to 2280-2020 BC. In addition to eight flint arrowheads, the excavators found an archer’s bone wristguard that had been studded with copper rivets covered by sheet gold caps.
Dating from about 2000 BC, the Migdale Hoard, a collection discovered at Migdale, Sutherland, east of Bonar Bridge and north of Inverness, contains a mixture of metalwork and other artefacts including a bronze axe head, sets of bronze bangles and anklets and a series of carved jet and cannel coal buttons.
At Cairnpapple Hill, West Lothian, a small cairn was added under which there was a burial and Bell Beaker pottery which indicates a date of around 2000 BC. Aligned to this cairn were sockets for three upright stones placed at the centre of an arc of seven small pits containing cremated bones and the remains of bone skewer pins. The cairn was later enlarged to include burial cists and later further enlarged to include two cremation making the whole site a tomb monument.
Cladh Hallan in South Uist, an island of the Outer Hebrides, is the only place in Britain where prehistoric mummies have been found. Four bodies were found, one of them a male had died 1600 BC, and another a female had died 1300 BC. The bodies had been preserved in a peat bog for six to eighteen months and then buried under the floor of a dwelling.
Traprain Law, East Lothian, south of the River Tyne and east of Edinburgh, is the site of a hillfort, which at its maximum extent covered forty acres. It was a place of burial in 1500 BC, and excavations have revealed that it was fortified and occupied from 1000 BC. It was defended by a steep precipice on one side and by artificial defences built on the gentler slope on the other side.
The remains of a wooden disc-wheel made of three pieces of ash dated 1260-810 BC found at Blair Drummond, southwest of the River Teith, Stirlingshire, northwest of Stirling, is the earliest known evidence of wheeled transport in Scotland.
Eildon Hill North, Roxburghshire, southeast of Edinburgh, is the site of the largest hillfort in Scotland. Within the enclosure, which covers forty acres (16 ha), the remains have been found of three hundred small bases cut into the rock to provide bases for turf or timber-walled houses. The site was first occupied around 1000 BC.
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