Mysterious Bronze Age mass burial site near Sanquhar Wind Farm

Newly published research has revealed a “mysterious mass burial event” in southern Scotland about 3,300 years ago.

Excavations were carried out in 2020 and 2021 by Guard Archeology during the construction of the access road to the Twentyshilling wind farm near Sanquhar in Dumfries and Galloway.

It revealed a Bronze Age mound – an ancient burial mound – containing the cremated bones of several people inside five crowded urns.

Archaeologist Thomas Muir, who led the excavation, said it appeared that some kind of “apocalyptic event” such as famine had led to several burials being buried at the same time.

The wind farm is located about three miles (4.8 km) south of Sanquhar on rugged, open high ground.

During their work, the Guard’s archaeology team found urns containing the cremated bones of at least eight individuals, all of whom were placed there in a single mass burial event sometime between 1439 and 1287 BC.

A small group of pits has also been excavated some distance to the north, revealing Late Neolithic activity between 2867 and 2504 BC.

“The five urns found at Twentyshilling Barrow contained at least eight people,” Mr Muir said.

“The jars were deposited at the same time as they were tightly packed inside the pit and are committed to the same time range from the 15th to the 13th century BC.”

He said this indicated it was a single mass burial, “possibly by the same family or group.”

“What is significant about the remains of Twintishling is that they were burned and then buried almost immediately,” he said.

He said this was unusual because there was a “big tradition” in the Bronze Age of leaving bodies for some time, as seen in another excavation at Broughton-in-the-Borders.

“It has been reopened several times and reused, so it has been used by the community over a long period of time,” he said.

“Whereas what we have in Twentyshilling is some sort of terrible event that happened to the community – perhaps famine – and a lot of people died within a very short space of each other.”

The Bronze Age in the region may have been a “period of special stress” as other burial sites in the region show evidence of famine and abandonment.

The archaeological work at Twentyshilling was a required condition for planning permission for the wind farm which is now fully operational.