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Archaeology Notes

Event ID 694340

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/694340

NR27SE 3 2863 7213

(NR 2863 7213) Evidence of occupation from the Mesolithic to the Iron Ages comes from a bunker site, 80m from the shore at Kilellan Farm, on which periodic excavations have taken place between 1954 and 1976.

The Mesolithic occupation (areas E 1 and 2 on plan) appears to focus on a shallow basin which lies NE of and below, a bluff. On the seaward, N and E, the area is bounded by a low curved bank of sand, hard and compact whose plan and profile suggest it may have been adapted by the Mesolithic settlers to screen their site. Post holes, at least some of which belong to this period occur in its top and margins. The flint-work includes microliths and scrapers as well as knapping debris, and similar material has come from the top of the bluff on the SW.

The evidence of a Neolithic presence is comparatively slight consisting of only one or two flints and sherds from the peaty mud surface of a low bank which runs N-S below the bunker on the E (area C1 on plan), but pottery from the Early Bronze Age settlement includes round-based bowls which may be Neolithic. The Early Bronze Age settlement utilised only the N part of the previously occupied 'basin' behind the curve of the natural bank. The first structure on the site was a well cut, slab covered drain which was over-laid by enigmatic stone structures

with which no obvious floor or occupation deposit was directly associated, though a heap of winkle-shells, which spread up and over the bank on the N was contemporary. These structures were covered by a productive Early Bronze Age midden which presumably emanted from a so-far stll unidentified nearby settlement Pottery includes sherds of beakers, food vessels, enlarged food vessels, encrusted urns and pygmy cups; and flints include arrowheads, barbed and tanged and leaf-shaped, knives scrapers and 'winkle-pickers'. A double palisade trench was dug into the accumulation; its curve suggesting a small enclosure, and a possible house floor was exposed on what is now the midden surface. On the flat bluff a few yards above the Bronze Age midden a major early historic settlement was located. Successive circular stone buildings had been dismantled to make way for a well-preserved souterrain, which was itself overlaid by successive occupations.

Thirty yards to the N was an extensive metal working site, a complex system of furnaces, claylined boxes and pits, for which associated finds suggest a prehistoric date. Two long mounds, nearly 2m high and 20m long, running N-S lie on the edge of the machair immediately above the shore (see plan). That to the NE of the bunker appears to have a ditch round it. The other (D1 on plan) is mentioned in local tradition as a ship burial, but excavation by Burgess in 1973 proved it to be a natural mound of sand with no sign of structure.

C Burgess 1976.

The excavations have been back-filled, and there is no trace of settlement apart from a few scattered stone and shells on the floor of a bunker. The finds from the site are with the excavators, but they are to be donated to Islay Museum.

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