In 1874 a small burial mound, about 8 feet in diameter and 2½ feet high, was removed in the course of the construction of a road between the North and South Havens in Fair Isle, lying midway between Orkney and Shetland. In the mound there was found a large, oval-shaped, rudely-formed, and unornamented urn of baked clay. Although imperfect it measures upwards of 12 inches in height. Beside it there was a smaller urn of steatite (Fig. 57), also oval in shape, but [Illustration: Fig. 57.—Urn of Steatite, found in Fair Isle (4 inches high).] much more neatly formed. It measures 5½ inches in its longer diameter, and almost 5 inches in its shorter diameter across the mouth, and stands 4 inches high. Under the rim is a bevelled band, giving it something of an ornamental character. Close by this mound, in a flat space, there were found at intervals a number of flat stones, from 6 to 12 inches under the surface, and below each stone there was observed what is described as “a carefully-rounded hole, about 6 inches deep by 10 inches broad, very smooth in the inside, and lined with about an inch thick of a soft, black, adhesive substance, resembling a mixture of peat-moss and clay, and containing in the bottom a whitish substance resembling bone ash.” These phenomena thus imperfectly observed indicate in all probability a small cemetery of urns set in the ground, with stone covers, and having no mounds heaped over them. In 1821 a mound in the island of Uyea, in Shetland, yielded a group of six interments, each consisting of an urn of this character filled with burnt human bones and ashes. Hibbert describes one of the urns as a well-shaped vessel, constructed of a soft magnesian stone, having the bottom made of a separate piece, and fitted into its place by a groove.[45] ----- Footnote 45: Mr. Petrie notices a similar instance in Orkney, the bottom being formed of a lozenge-shaped piece of stone, fitted into its place by a groove cut round its circumference. ----- In the month of August 1863, when some excavations were being made on the summit of an eminence called the Meikle Heog, at Haroldswick, in the island of Unst, Shetland, for the purpose of planting a flag-staff as a fishing signal, the labourers broke into a place of sepulture formed of upright flagstones, and enclosing a number of skulls and bones. Further examination disclosed another cist similarly formed. Unfortunately there is no record of the dimensions of these cists. In the one last mentioned there were found a human skull, some bones of the ox, and six urns or vessels of chloritic schist or steatite.[46] They were of different shapes and sizes, as follows:— ----- Footnote 46: These vessels are figured and described by Mr. G. E. Roberts in the _Mem. Soc. Anthrop. Lond._, vol. i. p. 296. ----- No. 1, a flat-bottomed vessel, with an unsymmetrical four-sided outline, the corners slightly rounded, and the sides bulging from the bottom upwards, about 7 inches high.