Enclosed Mounds, North Uist

NF 80980 72840, NF 86430 73810, NF 84320 73660, NF 71930

70170, NF 81580 60300 During 2021, preliminary survey work on 140 island dun sites across Uist was carried out by members of the Uist Community Archaeology Group on behalf of the Islands of Stone research project being undertaken by Southampton and Reading Universities.

When visiting Dun Eshader, an island dun in Loch Eisiadair which lies around 2km south of Sollas on North Uist (Canmore 10375), UCAG members Roger Auger and David Newman also visited another site on the loch’s N shore at NF 8099 7284. This site had been previously recorded by a 2016 HES aerial survey and classified as an enclosure (Canmore 351277; and A on sketch plan). From the air the site shows as a slumped sub-circular turf bank around 30m in diameter, but what the photo did not reveal is that the area within is almost entirely occupied by a natural mound around 4m high, which is a feature not normally seen within other recorded enclosures and livestock folds on the island. The surveyors also noted its similarity to another unrecorded site lying around 6km NE within the grazings of the township of Ahmor at NF 8643 7381 in an area known as Cnoc Sitheal (B on sketch plan). Here, another natural mound is enclosed around its base by a turf bank. A similar feature, although enclosing a lower mound, lies at the junction of three boundary dykes around 2km to the W at NF 8433 7367 (C on sketch plan).

Two other, albeit smaller, mound/sub-circular enclosure

combinations have been identified on North Uist at Sidhean Tuath at Balranald (Canmore 10126, E on sketch plan) and 40m NW of Teampuill Trionaid at Carinish at NF 8158 6030 (D on sketch plan, and shown on photo). According to Canmore, the mound at Sidhean Tuath may be a burnt mound and the bank runs tight to the mound base and is itself surrounded by a ditch. In the latter case, the enclosure/mound arrangement is reversed, with the bank enclosing a flattened area of ground on the summit of what appears to be a natural mound. The possibility exists that this unusual combination of mounds and enclosures represents an, as yet unidentified, site class. Alternatively, mound sites are known to have been used as ‘thing’ or assembly site locations, in the late medieval period where people came to resolve disputes. A similar tradition is recorded in the Hebrides in the early modern period when township tenants gathered at a traditional place to make decisions about land and grazing allocations as part of the communal run-rig system.

Roger Auger and David Newman – Uist Community Archaeology Group

(Source: DES Vol 22)