High Pasture Cave, Skye
Documented High Pasture Cave, Uamh An Ard Achadh, is one of the strongest northern ritual case studies for this site. ScARF states that excavations there transformed understanding of ritual sites in Iron Age Scotland, and identifies Steven Birch and Martin Wildgoose as excavators between 2004 and 2010. [scarf-high-pasture]
Documented The 2025 Oxbow volume by Steven Birch and Jo McKenzie treats High Pasture Cave under the themes of ritual, memory, and identity in the Iron Age of Skye. [book-high-pasture]
Reconstruction use On this website, High Pasture Cave should support discussion of caves, darkness, water, bone, deposition, memory, and landscape sacrality. It should not be reduced to a named deity cult unless a specific published source is cited.
Mine Howe, Orkney
Documented UHI describes Mine Howe as an Iron Age ritual site investigated through geophysical survey, excavation, augering, and landscape survey. The investigations revealed in situ ferrous and non-ferrous metalworking immediately outside the monumental stone-revetted ditch around the complex underground structure. [uhi-mine-howe]
Documented Kath Page's study frames Mine Howe through iron working, feasting, and social identity, making it especially useful for connecting ritual space, craft, fire, social hierarchy, and transformation. [page-mine-howe]
The Cairns, South Ronaldsay, Orkney
Documented The Cairns project investigates later prehistory around Windwick, South Ronaldsay, with work ongoing since 2006 and excavation focused on a large Atlantic roundhouse or broch and associated Iron Age to Norse-period structures. [uhi-cairns]
Documented UHI frames the Windwick Bay Field Project as a way to investigate the social, political, ritual, and economic role of brochs in Orkney and wider Atlantic Iron Age Scotland. [uhi-cairns-project]
Souterrains and underground places
Documented ScARF describes souterrains as underground or semi-underground structures, also called earth houses in antiquarian literature, with varying dates across Scotland. [scarf-souterrains]
Caution Souterrains should not be treated as automatically religious buildings. They are better presented as ambiguous underground spaces where storage, status, concealment, closure, deposition, and ritual meaning may overlap.
Struidh, Eigg
Documented Historic Environment Scotland discusses Struidh on Eigg as a possible sacred place, with a stone platform, a small circular stone building, and an underground chamber beneath a field of boulders. [historic-eigg]
Reconstruction use Struidh is useful for discussing how cliffs, stone, platforms, circular structures, and underground chambers could frame pre-Christian sacred places in western Scotland.