Three sites were excavated: a class II henge, a massive round barrow and a pair of ring-ditches. Five periods of activity were noted on the henge site: I - pre henge-bank activity, including one burial; II - the class II henge, a ditch with an external bank enclosing a timber ring (late third millennium BC); III - burial and ritual/domestic activity, the former associated with food vessels, cinerary urns and a beaker, the latter with beaker material (second millennium BC); IV - in situ cremation and burial (late second/early first millennium BC); V-long grave cemetery (mid/late first millennium AD). A second timber ring, three burials and a number of pits could not be securely related to this sequence. One of the Period III food vessels had contained a cereal-based material.The barrow covered a substantial area of old land surface (Period II) exhibiting probable cultivation traces which in turn sealed small pits (Period I). The construction of the barrow (Period III) was undertaken in six phases, which include a complex timber substructure (A), a ring-bank (B), a fire set near the top of the mound (D) and a stone capping (F). The mound was largely built of material dug from a surrounding ditch, though large quantities of field-stone and turf were also used. The mound has been dated to the early/mid second millennium be. Phosphate concentrations suggest that the barrow had covered burials. Two food vessel sherds were incorporated into the lower mound material. A spindle whorl was found in the upper part of the mound. Multiple and single cremation deposits and two inhumations, both with food vessels, one with a disc-bead jet necklace, had been dug into the mound's surface or had been incorporated during its building. A large cupmarked slab was found at the barrow's summit.The two ring-ditches may have enclosed low barrows. A pit containing cremated bone and 'WesternNeolithic' pottery dated to the early/mid third millennium BC was cut by ring-ditch 2.
Hebridean sites of the coastal sand cliffs and associated machair, or sandy plain have been known for many years. Artefacts and ecofacts of various types have long been collected from archaeological sites in the eroding sand-cliffs of the machairs of the Outer Hebrides. Early in 1983, personnel of the then Central Excavation Unit of Historic Scotland's predecessor revisited very nearly all of the coastal archaeological sites then known in the Long Isle, with the specific task of identifying those at immediate threat from coastal erosion and of assessing the feasibility of their excavation or preservation. Some 32 sites were seen to be undergoing active erosion; at nine of them preservation was not being pursued and excavation was feasible. These sites were of two morphotypes: sites exposed in roughly vertical sand-cliffs and sites exposed over relatively large horzontal areas of sand deflation. It was decided to examine one sand-cliff site along its exposed face. The site selected was Balelone in North Uist, its excavation designed to explore both the problems associated with the excavation of deep midden sites with complex stratigraphy and the not-inconsiderable problems of excavation in sand. In the light of the Balelone trial excavation, a new approach was called for. A structured approach aimed firstly at establishing the three-dimensional extent of the sites to be examined. Four sites were then sampled (the sand-cliff sites of Baleshare, on the island of the same name off the west coast of North Uist and Hornish Point, South Uist and the deflation sites of South Glendale, South Uist and Newtonferry, North Uist) within a rigorously-defined research framework.The machair sites were formed by sand accretion, facilitated by human activities ranging from construction to refuse disposal and cultivation. Their formation was intermittent and they underwent episodes of major erosion, isolating the sites from the landscape mass of the machair sands. Despite their apparent wealth of suitable material, the dating of Hebridean coastal sites presents special problems. The strategy here was to provide a dating framework for the sequences on each site, from which the dates of archaeological significant structures and events could then be arrived at by extrapolation. Preliminary dates from the earliest and latest strata at Balelone spanned such a small period that a First Millennium BC date-range could be assigned. At Baleshare, the deposits investigated were chiefly later Bronze Age; following abandonment (roughly 200 radiocarbon years) of the Period I cultivated soil Period II represented extensive, manured, cultivated fields in the vicinity of a settlement now lost to the sea. As Period II went on. the settlement seems to have moved closer to the excavated area. After another hiatus of a minimum of 350 radiocarbon years, there were further cultivated plots and associated settlement of Iron Age date (Period III). By contrast, the site at Hornish Point (including successive wheelhouses and associated cultivation areas) is considered to be all of one - dynamic, Iron Age - period, lasting some 300 radiocarbon years (with potentially earlier structures unexcavated). A post-medieval blackhouse of characteristic Lewisian form had been cut into the settlement mound. The three dates from Newtonferry suggest that some Early Medieval activity took place at the site, while the bulk of the deposits date from the thirteenth-fourteenth centuries AD. At South Glendale, the radiocarbon dates indicate occupation sometime between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries AD; stratigraphically lower, fragmented and truncated remains were prehistoric, probably early Bronze Age.
Excavations undertaken in 1982,1984 and 1985 on cropmark sites of a promontory fort and nearby palisaded homestead revealed structural remains mainly of the Iron Age and evidence of occupation or other activity from the Mesolithic to the present day. The palisaded homestead was paralleled by a similar homestead phase of the occupation of the promontory, later replaced by a fort with three periods of defence construction. The project was organized and funded by Historic Scotland (former SDD/HMB).
A narrow section across an area between two souterrains was excavated in advance of road realignment; part of one of the souterrains was also exposed. The excavation revealed deposits up to c 1.8 m deep in places, largely made up of material washed downhill on to the site. Early-mid first millennium BC: Period I – ard tillage; II – construction and reconstruction of a round timber house, and the erection of a stone-faced earth bank; III – tillage; IV – the construction, and destruction by fire, of a post-built structure; beginning of water scouring of the site and start of hillwash deposition. Settlement was re-established later in the millennium on the surface of the hillwash deposits (Period VI). This was subsequently covered by more hillwash. Recent settlement was represented by uncharacterized activity at the south edge of the excavated area and by two post-medieval buildings (associated with a settlement to the SE) the later of which was probably demolished during 19th-century road building. Quantities of pottery of 10 fabrics and three main styles (I, flat rims; 2, splayed rims; 3, everted rims) were found. Carbonized plant material was recovered, including many grains of six-row (mainly naked) barley, a little wheat, and oats, possibly domesticated. The pollen analysis of a peat column taken from a bog 2 km from the site showed a notable forest decline at c 4500 BP, followed by a pinebirch regeneration, followed, shortly before 1700 BP, by a further decline.
SummaryA cist was discovered in December 1983 at Abercairny, Perthshire. It contained the remains of an inhumation, a flint knife and part of a spacer-platejet necklace.
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