cairn

Scottish breed of terrier. Shaggy, short-legged, and compact, it can be sandy, greyish brindle, or red. It was formerly used for flushing out foxes and badgers.

cairn

In archaeology, a barrow or burial mound made entirely or partly of stones. Cairns are usually erected to cover a chamber or pit and have a surrounding ditch. They are found only in regions with a stony subsoil. Like barrows, long cairns are Neolithic (New Stone Age), whereas round cairns belong to the Bronze Age.

Burials at Paszyrck, Siberia, around 400 BC, were in deep pits lined with logs and covered with a low cairn of stones. Climatic conditions preserved the contents in natural refrigeration, so that the tattoos on bodies could be seen.