What Are Rock Cairns?

Pedro_P

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Rock cairns are typically associated with ancient cultures. This burial cairn in Scotland dates back to the Bronze Ages.
Credit: shutterstock
▼ Rock cairns are human-made stacks, mounds or piles of rocks. They take different forms, and have been built by cultures around the world for many different purposes. Cairns may serve as monuments, burial sites, navigational aids (by land or sea), or ceremonial grounds, among other uses. They may stand alone, in clusters, or in a network of related cairns; for example, as trail markers in a park.
Larger cairns can withstand time and weather, and archaeologists believe that some examples are hundreds of years old. Rock cairns are considered cultural features, or parts of a landscape built by humans. They're similar to works built with larger stones, such as megaliths, earthen mounds or stone geoglyphs, which are stones arranged to outline an image when seen from above.
Cairns aren't just structures — their locations may be carefully chosen, and the construction process or ceremonial use may be culturally important. Because of this, rock cairns can be "very difficult to understand without looking at a landscape scale," said María Nieves Zedeño, an archaeologist at the University of Arizona.
Trail markers and art projects
While many cairn traditions are very old, one type of cairn-building feels distinctly modern. There's a controversial trend of artistically stacking stones in the wilderness, expressly to post pictures to social media. Conservationists criticize these amateur stacks, saying they can be confused for trail markers, and lead hikers astray. They also note that these amateur piles can disturb wildlife when they're built or fall apart and that they leave a human mark in places that should be left in a more natural state.
Most of these artistic stone stacks are not easily confused with older cairns, which, over hundreds of years, have had soil and vegetation build up around the rocks. Historical cairns may be so old that they've sunken into the ground, have been covered in lichen, or are otherwise obscured from view.
The scale is also typically different. (▪ ▪ ▪)

► Please, continue reading this article here: Source