File:One of the Hills of Dunipace - geograph.org.uk - 1748406.jpg

English: One of the Hills of Dunipace. This is the more prominent (though the smaller) of the two hills, since it is better exposed to view. It is seen here from a point near the entrance of 1748259. For another view, see 435908. This site, with its curious mounds, bore the name Dunipace long before the modern village of that name existed (the present-day village of Dunipace was originally called Milltown of Dunipace). http://www.scotlandsplaces.gov.uk/search_item/index.php?service=RCAHMS&id=47050

See http://www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/1663/hills_of_dunipace.html (at The Modern Antiquarian) for various interesting comments about these hills, and http://canmore.rcahms.gov.uk/en/site/47049/details/hills+of+dunipace/ (at Canmore) for a concise discussion of their likely origins. As is mentioned at the first of those links, one theory is that the name is derived from the Gaelic "dùin na bàis", meaning "hills of death", but this is just one of several possibilities.

On more than one occasion, I've been told that there used to be three mounds, but that one of them was cleared away at some time in the past. I had previously dismissed this idea as the result of some confusion, but, after further research, I managed to locate an authority for it: the second volume of the "Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland" (1884; ed. Francis H. Groome), in its entry for Dunipace, quotes a certain Dr Hill Burton as writing that the hills are "evidently residuary masses left by retreated waters, in which they make shallows or islands. This will account for their form without the necessity of supposing that they were ever rounded by art. If analogy did not support this view, it would be strengthened by the incident of a third hill in the same place having been levelled about 1835, and showing complete internal evidence of natural formation" [the source work is not named, but it is John Hill Burton's "The History of Scotland from Agricola's Invasion to the Revolution of 1688", Volume 1, page 67; what I found surprising is that the Gazetteer has added the words "about 1835", which are not present in the original work].

However, the notion of three mounds is contradicted by other sources from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. For example, William Nimmo's "A General History of Stirlingshire" (published in 1777) says of the River Carron:

"Not long after it hath reached the low country, the river comes up to a small, but pleasant valley, where, upon the north bank, stand two beautiful mounts, called the hills of Dunipace, which are taken notice of by most of our historians, as monuments of great antiquity". The book then proceeds to give a detailed account of their dimensions and situation (indicating that more than a cursory examination had been made), a description of other antiquities in the area, and a summary of the area's historical associations; the book was revised, enlarged, and reissued as two volumes in 1817, and again in 1880, but all editions agree that there were only two mounds.

[I can only speculate that the third hill, if it existed, was a similar mound, located within the wider area, but standing apart from the two remaining mounds, outside of the area that is now associated with the modern cemetery.]