Cairn

For other uses, see Cairn (disambiguation).

A cairn to mark the summit of a mountain

Cairn is a term used mainly in the English-speaking world for a man-made pile of stones. It comes from the Irish: carn (plural cairn) or Scottish Gaelic: càrn (plural càirn). Cairns are found all over the world in uplands, on moorland, on mountaintops, near waterways and on sea cliffs, and also in barren desert and tundra areas. They vary in size from small stone markers to entire artificial hills, and in complexity from loose, conical rock piles to delicately balanced sculptures and elaborate feats of megalithic engineering. Cairns may be painted or otherwise decorated, e.g. for increased visibility or for religious reasons.

In modern times, cairns are often erected as landmarks, a use they have had since ancient times. Since prehistory, they have also been built as sepulchral monuments, or used for defensive, hunting, ceremonial, astronomical and other purposes.

Modern cairns

Line of cairns used to mark the way above the treeline on Mount Washington, New Hampshire

Today, cairns are built for many purposes. The most common use in North America and Northern Europe is to mark mountain bike and hiking trails and other cross-country trail blazing, especially in mountain regions at or above the tree line. For example, the extensive trail network maintained by the DNT, the Norwegian Trekking Association, extensively uses cairns in conjunction with T-painted rock faces to mark trails. Other examples of these can be seen in the lava fields of Volcanoes National Park in Hawaii to mark several hikes.^[1] Placed at regular intervals, a series of cairns can be used to indicate a path across stony or barren terrain, even across glaciers. Such cairns are often placed at junctions or in places where the trail direction is not obvious, and may also be used to indicate an obscured danger, such as a sudden drop, or a noteworthy point such as the summit of a mountain. Most trail cairns are small, a foot or less in height, but may be built taller so as to protrude through a layer of snow. Hikers passing by often add a stone, as a small bit of maintenance to counteract the erosive effects of severe weather. North American trail marks are sometimes called "ducks" or "duckies", because they sometimes have a "beak" pointing in the direction of the route. The expression "two rocks do not make a duck" reminds hikers that just one rock resting upon another could be the result of accident or nature rather than intentional trail marking.

Coastal cairns, or "sea marks", are also common in the northern latitudes, especially in the island-strewn waters of Scandinavia and eastern Canada. Often indicated on navigation charts, they may be painted white or lit as beacons for greater visibility offshore.

One of many cairns marking British mass graves at the site of the Battle of Isandlwana, South Africa.

Modern cairns may also be erected for historical or memorial commemoration or simply for decorative or artistic reasons. One example is a series of many cairns marking British soldiers' mass graves at the site of the Battle of Isandlwana, South Africa. Another is the Matthew Flinders Cairn on the side of Arthur's Seat, a small mountain on the shores of Port Phillip Bay, Australia. A large cairn was built atop a hill next to the I-476 highway in Radnor, Pennsylvania, part of a series of large rock sculptures initiated in 1988 to symbolize the township's Welsh heritage and to beautify the visual imagery along the highway.^[2] Some are merely places where farmers have collected stones removed from a field. These can be seen in the Catskill Mountains, North America where there is a strong Scottish heritage, and may also represent places where livestock were lost. In locales exhibiting fantastic rock formations, such as the Grand Canyon, tourists often construct simple cairns in reverence of the larger counterparts.^{[citation needed]}. By contrast, cairns may have a strong aesthetic purpose, for example in the art of Andy Goldsworthy.

History

Europe and the Middle East

Cairn of the Neolithic-era passage grave on Gavrinis island, Brittany.

The building of cairns for various purposes goes back into prehistory in Eurasia, ranging in size from small rock sculptures to substantial man-made hills of stone (some built on top of larger, natural hills). The latter are often relatively massive Bronze Age or earlier structures which, like kistvaens and dolmens, frequently contain burials; they are comparable to tumuli (kurgans), but of stone construction instead of earthworks. Cairn originally could more broadly refer to various types of hills and natural stone piles, but today is used exclusively of artificial ones.

The word cairn derives from Scots cairn (with the same meaning), in turn from Scottish Gaelic càrn, which is essentially the same as the corresponding words in other native Celtic languages of Britain and Ireland, including Welsh carn (modern carnedd), Irish carn, and Cornish karn or carn. Cornwall (Kernow) itself may actually be named after the cairns that dot its landscape, such as Cornwall's highest point, Brown Willy Summit Cairn, a 5 m (16 ft) high and 24 m (79 ft) diameter mound atop Brown Willy hill in Bodmin Moor, an area with many ancient cairns. Burial cairns and other megaliths are the subject of a variety of legends and folklore throughout Britain and Ireland. In Scotland, it is traditional to carry a stone up from the bottom of a hill to place on a cairn at its top. In such a fashion, cairns would grow ever larger. An old Scottish Gaelic blessing is Cuiridh mi clach air do chàrn, "I'll put a stone on your cairn". Cairns in the region were also put to vital practical use. For example, Dún Aonghasa, an all-stone Iron Age Irish hill fort on Inishmore in the Aran Islands, is still surrounded by small cairns and strategically placed jutting rocks, used collectively as an alternative to defensive earthworks because of the karst landscape's lack of soil.

In Scandinavia, cairns have been used for centuries as trail and sea marks, among other purposes. In Iceland, cairns were often used as markers along the numerous single-file roads or paths that crisscrossed the island; many of these ancient cairns are still standing, although the paths have disappeared. In Norse Greenland, cairns were used as a hunting implement, a game-driving "lane", used to direct reindeer towards a game jump.^[3]

In the mythology of ancient Greece, cairns were associated with Hermes, the god of overland travel. According to one legend, Hermes was put on trial by Hera for slaying her favorite servant, the monster Argus. All of the other gods acted as a jury, and as a way of declaring their verdict they were given pebbles, and told to throw them at whichever person they deemed to be in the right, Hermes or Hera. Hermes argued so skillfully that he ended up buried under a heap of pebbles, and this was the first cairn. In Croatia, in areas of ancient Dalmatia, such as Herzegovina and the Krajina, they are known as gromila.

In a legend of Portugal, a cairn is called a moledro, the stones of which are enchanted soldiers, and if one stone is taken from the pile and put under a pillow, in the morning a soldier will appear for a brief moment, then will change back to a stone and magically return to the pile.^[4]

Cairns are also common on the Mediterranean island of Corsica.

North and Northeast Africa

Ancient cairns in Qa’ableh, Somalia.

Cairns (taalo) are a common feature at Elaayo, Haylaan, Qa’ableh and Qombo'ul, among other places. Northern Somalia in general is home to a lot of such historical settlements and archaeological sites wherein are found numerous ancient ruins and buildings, many of obscure origins. However, many of these old structures have yet to be properly explored, a process which would help shed further light on local history and facilitate their preservation for posterity.^[5]

Since Neolithic times, the climate of North Africa has become drier. A reminder of the desertification of the area is provided by megalithic remains, which occur in a great variety of forms and in vast numbers in presently arid and uninhabitable wastelands: cairns (kerkour), dolmens and circles like Stonehenge, underground cells excavated in rock, barrows topped with huge slabs, and step pyramid-like mounds.

Asia and the Pacific

Cairn on Chandrashila Peak, above Tungnath, India.^{[clarification needed]}

Starting in the Bronze Age,^{[clarification needed]} burial cists were sometimes interred into cairns, which would be situated in conspicuous positions, often on the skyline above the village of the deceased. The stones may have been thought to deter grave robbers and scavengers. A more sinister explanation is that they were to stop the dead from rising. There remains is a Jewish tradition of placing small stones on a person's grave, as a token of respect. Stupas in India and Tibet probably started out in a similar fashion, although they now generally contain the ashes of a Buddhist saint or lama.

A Mongolian ceremonial cairn (ovoo)

A traditional and often decorated, heap-formed cairn called an ovoo is made in Mongolia. It primarily serves religious purposes, and finds use in both Tengriist and Buddhist ceremonies.

In Hawaii, cairns are called by the Hawaiian word ahu.^{[clarification needed]}

The Americas

A cairn marking the peak of Bald Mountain, Adirondacks.

Throughout what today are the continental United States and Canada, cairns still mark indigenous peoples' game-driving "lanes" leading to buffalo jumps, some of which may date to 12,000 years ago.

Natives of arctic North America (i.e. northern Canada, Alaska and indigenous Greenland) have built carefully constructed cairns and stone sculptures, called by names such as inuksuit and inunnguat, as landmarks and directional markers since before contact with Europeans. They are iconic of the region (an inuksuk even features on the flag of the Canadian far-northeastern territory, Nunavut), and are increasingly used as a symbol of Canadian national identity.

In North America, cairns are often petroforms in the shapes of turtles or other animals.^{[citation needed]}

Cairns have been used since pre-Columbian times throughout Latin America to mark trails. Even today in the Andes of South America, the Quechuan peoples use cairns as religious shrines to the indigenous Inca goddess Pachamama, often as part of a synchretic form of Roman Catholicism.

Cairns and anthropomorphism

Inuksuit at the Inuksuk Point (Baffin Island), Canada

Although the practice is not common in English, cairns are sometimes referred to by their anthropomorphic qualities. In German and Dutch, a cairn is known as Steinmann and Steenman respectively, meaning literally "stone man". A form of the Inuit inuksuk is also meant to represent a human figure, and is called an inunguak ("imitation of a person"). In Italy, especially the Italian Alps, a cairn is an ometto, or a "small man".

Chambered cairns

Main article: Chambered cairn

Clava cairns

Main article: Clava cairn

Court cairns

Main article: Court cairn

Sea cairns

Sea mark in Finnish coastal waters.

Coastal cairns called sea marks are also common in the northern latitudes, and are placed along shores and on islands and islets. Usually painted white for improved offshore visibility, they serve as navigation aids. In Scandinavia they are called kummel in Swedish and kummeli in Finnish, and are indicated in navigation charts and maintained as part of the nautical marking system.^[6] Inversely, they are used on land as sea cliff warnings in rugged and hilly terrain in the foggy Faroe Islands. In the Canadian Maritimes, cairns have been used as beacons like small lighthouses to guide boats, as depicted in the novel The Shipping News.

See also

• Dry stone
• Cairn terrier
• Dolmen
• Hörgr
• Kerb (archaeology)
• Rujm
• Stele
• Callander

References

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 

1. ^ http://www.nps.gov/havo/planyourvisit/hike_bc.htm
2. ^ Radnor Township website, Gateway Enhancement Strategy.
3. ^ Arneborg 2004
4. ^ A Genética e a Teoria da Continuidade Paleolítica aplicada à Lenda da Fundação de Portugal e Escócia Apenas Livros 2008 ISBN|978-989-618-180-2.
5. ^ Michael Hodd, East African Handbook, (Trade & Travel Publications: 1994), p.640.
6. ^ "Legend (INT Symbology)" (PDF). Merenkulku.fi. Helsinki, Finland: Finnish Transport Agency and Finnish Transport Safety Agency (TraFi). http://portal.fma.fi/portal/page/portal/589032C37AAC7314E040B40A0A016368.  Three-language key to reading Finnish navigation charts.

External links

• Notes on Building a Cairn (pdf), by Dave Goulder for the DSWA, Dry Stone Walling Association of Great Britain. Practical notes to help those embarking on a cairn-building project.