The truth is that we do not know where the individuals buried in the Ludin Links cairns lived! While DNA evidence has shown that these individuals were descended from ancestors in this same region, archaeology has not uncovered dwellings or other evidence of a settlement in Lundin Links. It is still unclear how much individuals would have moved around, though it is safe to say that both LL3 and LL11 would have lived their lives north of Hadrian's Wall. They may have lived a century apart from one another -- or at roughly the same time -- this also remains unclear.

What we do know is that in the 5th to 7th c. CE, a strip of coast in what is now Lundin Links in Fife was the location of burials undertaken with considerable care. The setting is distinctive. The cemetery sits on a narrow coastal shelf perched above the Firth of Forth, caught between the sea to the south and the abrupt rise of the Lomond Hills behind. Largo Bay curves eastward toward Elie and the East Neuk; to the west the links flatten toward Leven where the river meets the sea. On a clear day the view across the Firth takes in the full length of the East Lothian coast, with the cone of Berwick Law rising sharply above North Berwick and, further east, the Bass Rock standing alone in the water. The Bronze Age standing stones (pictured here) that still dominate the nearby golf course are a reminder that this landscape had been a place of human significance for thousands of years before the Pictish community established its cemetery on the dunes above the shore. 

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