Until recently, I had never heard of the Knowe of Moan, in West Mainland, Orkney. I was searching for something else online when an image of what had once been a rather beautiful gilded bronze mount popped up on my screen. It was labelled as coming from the Knowe of Moan. I liked it so much that I decided to make a drawing reconstruction of what it probably looked like before it lost most of its gilding and the insets dropped out. I enjoy doing that kind of drawing.

Further research (mostly online) revealed that in fact that particular mount did not come from the Knowe of Moan. According to a 2021 National Museum publication by Adrián Maldonado (“Crucible of Nations: Scotland from Viking Age to Medieval Kingdom”), it is unprovenanced, so it might not even have come from Orkney. But it is a rather attractive object. However there are a handful of other interesting objects from Moan, including a different mount or brooch. These finds do not come from an excavation where standard records were kept and deposited in a proper archive, nor was there a museum or university department in Orkney where people could report stray finds they had made and be asked relevant questions about the find at the time. They were made in the late 19^th century, before archaeology was an established profession but a time when scholarly gentlemen were starting to take an interest in finds from the past. So the records of who found what at Moan, when they found it, and exactly where they found it, are a bit confusing.

There are some facts which appear to be generally agreed, and others which are not.

1. Most sources agree that in 1886, a farmer called George Flett ploughed up a small stone cist on a hillock called the Knowe of Moan, in the parish of Harray on mainland Orkney. The hillock may originally have been a Bronze Age burial mound or barrow. Mr Flett had knocked the lid of the cist off, and squashed open the ends and sides, pushing them away from the filling of fine black earth.
2. Finds were collected at the site by Mr Flett himself and some local children over a short period of time.
3. They consisted of beads , a small cruciform metal object, a bronze spoon, 3 small bronze fragments, a small piece of slag, a piece of flint (which isn’t native to the area), and a white pebble.
4. Some of the beads were found inside the cist, some outside, and the other objects were all found outside. Whether they were ever inside is a matter of debate.
5. It is further agreed that no human remains, cremated or otherwise, were found. Whether this is because there weren’t any, or because an acid soil had destroyed them, or because the farmer and children didn’t notice little scattered pieces of burnt bone, is impossible to say for certain.
6. Mr Flett gave the finds to a friend of the antiquarian James Cursiter, authorising the friend to pass them on to Cursiter, who was making a collection of archaeological finds from the county.  Cursiter published them as part of a report in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland in 1887(Notice of the Bronze Weapons of Orkney and Shetland, and of an Iron Age deposit found in a Cist at Moan, Harray’ PSAS 21, pp339-46).
7. These finds are now in the Hunterian Museum, with the rest of James Cursiter’s collection. The beads are really beautiful, and the metal object is also quite attractive. If you go to their collections website there are some good images of some of the beads.

From this point onwards, there are disagreements in the various accounts that I have found so far.

1. Some people consider that the cist was probably the cremation burial of a female Viking, and there were originally human remains that have not been recovered. Others consider that the deposit was a hoard, and cite other examples of Viking bead hoards.
2. The beads are stated to be made of glass and amber in most sources, but in the original 1887 publication Cursiter mentions only glass beads. The amber is said to come from the Baltic.
3. The number of beads varies from 55 in the 1887 report to 62-64 in later reports.
4. The cruciform metal object is variously described as a mount or a brooch or a mount recycled into a brooch. It is believed to originate in Ireland and is 9^th century.
5. And according to two separate exceedingly respectable websites, everything at Moan is Bronze Age!

Sorting all these contradictory accounts out is a fine way to spend a wet afternoon, as was drawing what I think the mount/brooches must have looked like originally. I should love to see the original objects one day.