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Publication Account
Date 2007
Event ID 587431
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/587431
NF74 3 HORNISH POINT ('Cnoc Mor')
NF/758470
This wheelhouse with its associated middens in South Uist [3, fig. 1] was explored in 1984 and the detailed report has recently appeared on the internet, and this should be consulted for full details [8]. Coring first revealed that midden deposits extended up to 20m inland and over a length of at least 60m along the exposed sand face and to a depth of up to 2.5m; they were covered by up to 3m of blown sand.
Excavation uncovered a series of superimposed drystone built structures, one of which had a sub-floor stone drain and radial walls, characteristic of the wheelhouse form of stone roundhouse [2]. The explorations also found a burial under the roundhouse [3, fig. 2], as well as four pits of which three contained animal (ox and sheep) and human bone. The burial – which may be older than the roundhouse rather than a foundation deposit – consisted of a single individual probably male and aged about 12 years. The skeleton had been dismembered by butchery probably some time after death when the body was partly decomposed, and the fragments distributed among the four pits. Cannibalism was ruled out as there were none of the marks of skinning, filleting and butchering which were found on the animal bones. Barber suggests that the boy may have died under “inauspic-ious circumstances”, perhaps at sea, and had therefore been buried in this peculiar way when he was found on the beach [3, 778].
The pits under the roundhouse were dated to between 460 +/- 50 bc (GU-2161) and 385+/- 50 bc (GU-2017); these dates are not calibrated for carbonate retention [3].
Sources: 1. NMRS site no. NF 74 NE 18: 2. Discovery and Excavation in Scotland, 1984, 45: 3. Barber, Halstead, James and Lee 1989: 4. Armit 1992, 212-3: 5. Armit 1996, 147, 149 and 155-57: 6. Gilmour 2002, 57, 63, 66: 7. Crawford 2002, 117 and 118: 8. See the Scottish Archaeology Internet Report at http://www.sair.org.uk/sair3/
E W MacKie 2007
