Skye, Tote House

NG44NW 4 4097 4975

See also NG44NW 13.

In the autumn of 1922 a large grass-grown cairn on the foreshore at Tote was excavated by T C Lethbridge. The cairn was about 40ft in diameter and about 8ft high. In the top was a cup-shaped depression which may have been caused by robbery for wall-building, or by a secondary burial. At ground level in the centre of the cairn was a short cist containing upwards of 150 flint and other flakes and two rude scrapers. There was no trace of bone, although charcoal was abundant. (T C Lethbridge 1920) The secondary burial was about 1 1/2ft below the surface of the depression on top of the cairn: it was composed of fine sand in which were a few fragments of a human femur and burnt bones. Associated with the burial were an iron axe (with remains of handle), a bronze pen- annular broach (with fragments of leather still adhering to it), a bone bead, a hone, a piece of wood, 2ins long, a great number of rusty pieces of iron attached to fragments of wood - probably the remains off a shield, but also described as boat rivets, (A O Curle M Olsen and H Shetelig 1954) and several small iron fragments. The finds are in the private possession of T C Lethbridge (S Grieg 1940).

The flints from the cist are listed as mesolithic survivals and described as a remarkable series of buchite, or vitrified shale, artifacts found in two (sic) Bronze Age cairns. They include fairly large fine blades, some retouched, a few cores, one apparently having served as a scraper, and a steeply dressed trimming-flake. An abruptly edge-blunted microlith, made on a narrow blade, very probably cut by micro-burin technique, constitutes the most northerly example of the kind in the British Isles (A D Lacaille 1954).

T C Lethbridge 1920; S Grieg 1940; A O Curle, M Olsen and H Shetelig 1954; A D Lacaille 1954.

This cairn, situated at NG 4097 4975 a few feet above high water mark on the E side of Loch Snizort, now measures 19.0m in diameter and 1.2m in height. The central excavation is very obvious with the stones lying loose; the remainder of the cairn is turf covered.

Visited by OS (C F W) 24 April 1961.

Flints from this cairn are in Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology; deposited by T C Lethbridge (51.1063).

(Undated) information in Museum Accessions Register.