Bay Of Skaill

HY21NW 13 2295 1874.

A long cist containing a male skeleton was found here in the spring of 1888, immediately behind the present day shoreline. The burial was accompanied by a bone comb and comb case, an iron arrowhead, a spearhead, a knife and a whetstone; a horse leg-bone and bird and fish bones were also recovered. Dating is by typological consideration of the artefacts (which are in RMS: IL 230-5), and can be placed in the Viking period, probably the ninth century or later.

W G T Watt 1888; A W Brogger 1929; S Grieg 1940; H Shetelig 1945; RCAHMS 1946; F T Wainwright 1962; C D Morris et al 1985.