Crone, A. and Toolis, R., eds. (2003). Bronze Age farms and Iron Age farm mounds of the Outer Hebrides. Edinburgh: Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. https://doi.org/10.5284/1017938.

This chapter presents the background to the project, details of the coring programme and the technique of tapestry excavation (excavation of a strip of deposits along an exposed face), excavation methodology, data management, methods for observation and interpretation and presentation of results.

Natural resources for flesh, fish, fowl and vegetation have an economic significance for early settlers, and are therefore discussed here. This is followed by a brief archaeological survey. Drowning of the coastline of the Western Isles has removed the evidence for coastal sites of the Mesolithic period. Neolithic evidence includes 34 megaliths and 7 occupation sites, while early Bronze Age settlement evidence is limited. In the later Bronze Age/early Iron Age 14 settlement mounds have been identified. The main focus of the archaeological survey is on the Iron Age. Structures, material culture and the evidence for metalworking are considered. Much of the material culture derives from eroding sand faces and is therefore without context although pottery has been recovered from archaeological sites.

Details of site location are followed by a brief description of the 48-metre length of midden deposit prior to this excavation, and an account of earlier work. The excavation is described in a series of 29 blocks. Remains include midden deposits, dumped deposits, a grave pit containing an inhumation, substantial structural phases, floor layers associated with a circular structure and cultivation layers. Artefacts and ecofacts comprise pottery (including a near complete vessel), a quernstone, slag and animal bone. Many radiocarbon dates are integrated into the archaeological description.

Details of site location, topographical survey, site history and a nearby cairn are presented. Two areas were excavated. Area I contained pits, a hearth, paving stones and stakeholes suggestive of settlement. Area 2 contained the remains of a post-medieval byre overlying midden and cultivation deposits.

Six principal areas of research seemed to present themselves. The nature of the sites themselves, their structures and deposits constitute the first and their chronology, the second. The regional environment in which they functioned, through time, may be considered next, because it sets outer limits to the possibilities for the development of the economies of the sites, the fourth research area. Technology and trade, while aspects of site economy, merit separate consideration and the settlement landscape, the distribution and location of these sites is also of sufficient importance to stand alone, as a research topic. A list of questions for the sites is listed under the following subheadings: the sites; deposits; structures; artefacts; chronology; regional environment; site economies; technology; trade; site distribution and location. This is followed by the methods employed to answer them. Specialist methodologies comprise those for coarse pottery, mammalian fauna, fish bones, pollen, charred plant remains, snails, phytoliths, lake sediments and diatoms.

An extended inhumation from Baleshare was an adult female with poor dental health and joint disease. At Hornish Point a juvenile had been distributed within four pits. Deliberate disarticulation or butchery was evidenced by cut marks on the fourth and fifth lumbar vertebrae. Animal bone was mainly sheep with cattle, pig, red deer, dog, seal and otter. Many cut marks and burnt bones were identified. A few deposits appear to be deliberate burials of new born animals, of butchery waste and perhaps in one case, of the remains of a funerary feast. A great diversity of fish bones included large shark, gadoids, wrasse, mackerel and several kinds of flatfish. Bird bones included the extinct great auk and crane, along with waterfowl, waders and seabirds.

The specific origin of the midden organic horizons remains an enigma and the pollen analytical data prompt more questions than answers. Of the possible origins only an origin from animal faeces can be discounted. Moreover, the presence of a relatively wide variety of pollen taxa can only be adequately explained by considering the exploitation of the most abundant habitats in North Uist, ie the machair grassland, peatland and moorland communities and possibly the cultivation of specific crops such as cereals. A combination of specific crops such as cereals. A combination of practices involving the exploitation of all the dominant habitats for thatching and/or animal bedding and/or fuel as well as the cultivation of specific crops would account for the pollen spectra of the Balelone midden organic horizons. It would not be unreasonable to suppose that the producers of the midden were indeed using such a wide variety of natural resources but there is no viable palaeoecological test which suggests itself as the panacea to this enigma.

This study demonstrates that areas of ancient human occupation and activity are characterised by concentration of phytoliths which are orders of magnitude higher than occur naturally in coastal dune systems. Some aspects of human activity can be distinguished, ie the introduction of peat, turves, plant or animal waste and possible differences in pasture/grazing in the area.

Chapters 16 and 17 describe analyses of pollen, diatoms and the geochemistry of lakes sites increasingly distant from the excavated areas. The aim has been to investigate, if possible, the scale of landscape impact of the Bronze Age settlements of the islands, given that it seemed likely that the earlier deposits at Baleshare were of similar age. We also wished to investigate the landscape impact of the Iron Age settlers which, on then current evidence, was on a much larger scale than the impact of earlier, or later, settlement in the Long Isle. The pollen and diatom work indicated that, following the development of the machair in this area, probably in the late Neolithic, its botanical signal largely obscured evidence for human activity. Analyses were therefore undertaken to ascertain the usefulness of studying machair development and the environmental history of the blacklands/machair ecotone using sediments from lake deposits on the machair margin and in the eastern catchment of the islands.

All specialist tables.