Skye, Talisker Moor

NG33SW 6 3236 3252

Lugged wooden bowl found in peat at a depth of 1m in 1979. The bowl is of alder (rim dia 200mm), carinated with an everted and faceted rim, a round base and two lugged handles. Ornamentation takes the form of 6 horizontal grooves above the maximum girth, from which descend vertical gouge markings. Undated. In the Royal Museum of Scotland (RMS, formerly the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland [NMAS]).

Information contained in Letter and annotated 6" map from Dr J Close-Brooks, NMAS, to OS 10 August 1979; J Barber 1982.

Unfinished carved wooden bowl (of alder) held in Lochalsh District Museum under accession number 1990.7 and dated by radiocarbon to

20 +/- 50 ad (UT-1698).

C Earwood 1993.

This lugged or handled bowl of alder was found at a depth of 3' (0.9m) during peat-cutting on Talisker Moor. The vessel was found incomplete (the bottom having been penetrated, apparently by a square object) and the wood dried out considerably before conservation; the two warped major fragments and several smaller pieces are stored at the Royal Museum of Scotland (under accession number NMS IP 4). Crone notes a broad similarity to the bowl from Loch a' Ghlinne Bhig (NG44SW 3) and suggests that they may be products of the same workshop.

The vessel is of carinated form with a sharply-inturned shoulder and an everted, facetted rim; it has two opposed prominent perforated lugs at the broadest point, and has apparently been round-bottomed. It varies between 200mm (at the rim) and 230mm (at the shoulder) in external diameter, and has apparently measured about 105mm in internal depth, suggesting a capacity of approximately 0.35 litres. The upper portion of the exterior is decorated with six ornamented grooves, each of them measuring about 6.5mm in breadth and 0.2mm in depth; beneath these there is a series of short vertical marks, each of which measures beneath 28 and 30mm in length, beneath 10 and 15mm in breadth, and up to 0.9mm in depth.

The vessel has evidently been worked by carving (rather than turning) from a length of alder (either stem or branch) measuring a little over 300mm in thickness; the billet from which the bowl was worked was placed eccentrically within this, the midpoint being located about 25mm below the rim and adjacent to one of the lugs. The groove-ornament has apparently been worked with a sharp-edge knife and the vertical grooves by a series of oblique cuts with a concave gouge.

This vessel has been dated by radiocarbon to 120 +/- 80 ad (OxA-3542); this determination may be calibrated to between about 154 and 212 cal AD. The apparent similarity to some pottery forms of the later Pre-Roman Iron Age may not be coincidental.

J Barber 1983; R E M Hedges, R A Housley, C R Bronk-Ramsey and G J van Klinken 1993; C Earwood 1993; B A Crone 1993; R J C Mowat 1996, visited November 1994.