The Kilmartin Stones are a collection of 79 ancient graveslabs (one exception being a side-slab of a tomb chest) at Kilmartin parish church in the village of

Kilmartin Kilmartin (, meaning "church of Màrtainn") is a small village in Argyll and Bute, western Scotland. It is best known as the centre of Kilmartin Glen, an area with one of the richest concentrations of prehistoric monuments and historical sit ...

Argyll Argyll (; archaically Argyle; , ), sometimes called Argyllshire, is a Shires of Scotland, historic county and registration county of western Scotland. The county ceased to be used for local government purposes in 1975 and most of the area ...

Scotland Scotland is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, consisting of the northern part of the island of Great Britain and more than 790 adjac ...

, about 30 km due south of

Oban Oban ( ; meaning ''The Little Bay'') is a resort town within the Argyll and Bute council area of Scotland. Despite its small size, it is the largest town between Helensburgh and Fort William, Highland, Fort William. During the tourist seaso ...

(about 46 km by road). The earliest stones date back to the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries, with the most recent ones dated 1707 and 1712.

Description

Originally, the stones would have been laid flat on the ground to cover a grave. After the

Reformation The Reformation, also known as the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation, was a time of major Theology, theological movement in Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the p ...

, however, many of the stones were moved, and in 1956 they were moved inside a shelter to protect them from the weather. The symbolism of the motifs carved onto the slabs is the subject of much discussion and speculation. Many feature swords or

claymore A claymore (; from , "great sword") is either the Scottish variant of the late medieval two-handed sword or the Scottish variant of the basket-hilted sword. The former is characterised as having a cross hilt of forward-sloping quillons with ...

s, some alone, others with surrounding designs of twining or interlaced foliage. Several depict armed men. Other motifs include crosses, animals and

shears Shears may refer to: Cutting devices * Scissors, also called shears * Hair-cutting shears * Blade shears, typically used for shearing animals * Grass shears, for lawn trimming * Kitchen shears, scissors used in the kitchen for food preparation * ...

; a comb appears with shears on one stone. It has been suggested that several of the slabs may commemorate

Knights Templar The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon, mainly known as the Knights Templar, was a Military order (religious society), military order of the Catholic Church, Catholic faith, and one of the most important military ord ...

but this theory is unproven.

The nearby landscape

Kilmartin Glen Kilmartin Glen is an area in Argyll north of Knapdale. It has the most important concentration of Neolithic and Bronze Age remains in mainland Scotland. The glen is located between Oban and Lochgilphead, surrounding the village of Kilmartin. I ...

is the richest prehistoric landscape in Scotland. Within an area not much over long a huge diversity of

standing stone A menhir (; from Brittonic languages: ''maen'' or ''men'', "stone" and ''hir'' or ''hîr'', "long"), standing stone, orthostat, or lith is a large upright rock (geology), stone, emplaced in the ground by humans, typically dating from the Eur ...

stone circle A stone circle is a ring of megalithic standing stones. Most are found in Northwestern Europe – especially Stone circles in the British Isles and Brittany – and typically date from the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, with most being ...

s, carved rocks and ancient tombs can be found. It also has what is believed to be the only 'linear cemetery' in the country, a series of

chambered cairn A chambered cairn is a burial monument, usually constructed during the Neolithic, consisting of a sizeable (usually stone) chamber around and over which a cairn of stones was constructed. Some chambered cairns are also passage-graves. They are fo ...

s (burial mounds) laid out in a straight line right down the bottom of the

glen A glen is a valley, typically one that is long and bounded by gently sloped concave sides, unlike a ravine, which is deep and bounded by steep slopes. The word is Goidelic in origin: ''gleann'' in Irish and Scottish Gaelic, ''glion'' in Manx. ...

. The oldest of these is believed to be 6,000 years old.The Temple and the Lodge, 1989 Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh The reason for such a concentration of these ancient monuments in one small area of the

Scottish Highlands The Highlands (; , ) is a historical region of Scotland. Culturally, the Highlands and the Scottish Lowlands, Lowlands diverged from the Late Middle Ages into the modern period, when Scots language, Lowland Scots language replaced Scottish Gae ...

is unknown.

References

External links

* {{coord, 56, 8, 1, N, 5, 29, 13, W, region:GB_type:landmark, display=title Archaeological sites in Argyll and Bute Historic Environment Scotland properties in Argyll and Bute fr:Kilmartin