Coll, Sorisdale

NM26SE 8 2721 6384.

NM 2721 6384. Small fragments of pottery decorated with horizontal cord impressions found in a sand blow on an old land surface.

Visited by OS (I S S) 19 June 1972.

NM 272 638. Burial and House (possible), Sorisdale: An inhumation burial and a beaker vessel were discovered in the sand-hills 600m N of Sorrisdale in October 1976; excavation was undertaken by the RCHAMS, who showed that the burial lay close to a stone setting and had been deposited in a gravel-pit, which was aligned approximately E and W and was about 1.4m long and up to 0.6m broad. The pit had been dug through a layer of midden material comprising shells and sherds of Beaker domestic ware; it had not been lined with stones, although there was a single boulder on the S side. The skeletal remains, which were those of a young adult, possibly female, lay with the head to the W end and were accompanied by sherds of an All-Over-Cord ornamented Beaker. A radiocarbon date of 1934 bc +/- 46 was obtained from analysis of the bones.

The stone setting, an arc of boulders some 4m across the chord, possibly formed part of the wall of a house, the rest of which had eroded away; the single course of walling stood to a maximum height of 0.35m above a thin floor-deposit of darker sand. It is unfortunate that so little of this setting survives, but it may be compared with structure II at Northton, Harris (NF99SE 2), also associated with Beaker pottery,

which the excavator thought did not represent a house in its own right, but a 'semi-subterranean shelter for a light hut or tent'. The finds are now in the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland (NMAS).

RCAHMS 1980, visited 1976; J N G Ritchie and J Crawford 1980.