Monument record 1120 - BHARPA CARINISH, NORTH UIST

NF86SW 45 837 604

Piles of stones, exposed in adjacent peat-cuttings last year, were found to form part of a large stone bank lying some 15m distant from the northern edge of Bharpa Carinish chambered cairn and apparently curving around the small hillock on which the latter is sited. The bank lay under 1m of peat and was built over a thin black, humus-rich soil, which may represent the earliest development of peat in the area. This black soil lay over a mineral soil which had developed over a neolithic structure containing a pit, postholes and large quantities of carbonised stems, suggestive of a wattle screen.
B A Crone and C M Mills 1988a; 1988b.

The full extent of the large stone bank, investigated in 1988, was traced under the peat by probing. It formed a large, roughly rectangular enclosure 58m by 37.5m in area, attached to the long cairn, Caravat Barp (NF86SW 14) so that the northern edge of the cairn formed the southern perimeter of the enclosure. Two radiocarbon determinations from the thin black peat on which the enclosure was built have produced dates of 2750 +/- 50 BP (GU-2457) and 3180 +/- 50 BP (GU-2454).
In the excavation area the black peat had developed over three stone-built hearths all built within 6m of each other. Each hearth was surrounded by thin but, extensive deposits of ash and charcoal, but no stratigraphic relationships between the hearths were determined. One of the ash-charcoal spreads has been radiocarbon-dated to 4490 +/- 50 BP (GU-2458). Associated with each hearth, and usually sealed by the ash-charcoal spread, was a shallow-pit and one or two small post-holes. The area in which these hearth complexes were found was delineated to the S by a shallow gulley and to the N by a steep natural scarp. Sponsor: SDD HBM-AOC.
B A Crone 1989b.

B A and C M Crone and Mills, 1988a, Discovery and Excavation, Scotland, 30 (Bibliographic reference). SWE13408.

B A and C M Crone and Mills, 1988b, 'Bharpa Carinish field bank and structure, North Uist, 33-5 (Bibliographic reference). SWE13409.

B. A. Crone, 1989b, Discovery and Excavation, Scotland, 71 (Bibliographic reference). SWE10422.

[B] A Crone, 1990a, 'Excavation and Survey at Bharpa Carinish, North Uist, 1989', 7-10 (Bibliographic reference). SWE13410.

A {et al.} Crone, 1993, Proc Prehist Soc (Bibliographic reference). SWE27978.

C M [et al.] Mills, 1994, Proc Soc Antiq Scot, 168 (Bibliographic reference). SWE34823.