Monument record 2270 - CLADH HALLAN

NF72SW 17 7305 2203

NF 7305 2203 An unusual 'figure of eight' stone-walled house was excavated by Sheffield University W of Cladh Hallan, near Daliburgh, South Uist. Work begun in 1994 was completed in 1995. The house was revetted into a Late Bronze Age midden (dated by a single radiocarbon determination of 2960 +/- 75 bp, and by the presence of coarse, flat rimmed ceramic vessels. The walls of the structure were well preserved on its W side, standing to over 1m. Floor layers were also intact. Bone and shell survive in the machair sand. The E and W ends of the building have been destroyed by quarrying and by wind erosion. Otherwise, the house survives in excellent condition. There is evidence of some stone robbing perhaps in the 19th century but the doorway between the two rooms, with a lintel in place, is well preserved. The small quantity of tumbled stones and the lack of organic material above the floors suggest that the structure was roofed neither with stone nor turf.
The floor levels in both rooms comprised a complex and compressed sequence of thin dark layers interspersed with thin layers of windblown sand. Otherwise the only internal features were the claylined stone trough and two post holes, one of which probably provided a central roof support, in the W room and a group of eight post or stake holes, an informal hearth and a low stone bench or footing in the E room. The doorway (0.73m wide) connecting the rooms had an extremely low roof, only 40cm off the ground, yet the floor surface under the door was worn thin from use. Connecting floor layers indicate that both rooms were in use at the same time, with the W room going out of use whilst floor layers were still being put down in the E room. The heaps of sand around the walls of the E room, its lack of a central post and its use for bronze working suggest that it was not roofed. The bronze debris in floor layer 233 included droplets, casting waste and part of a small bronze finger-ring.
On abandonment, the building filled up with clean windblown sand. This may well have been a rapid natural event. Amongst the blown sand were small, localised deposits of animal bones and large pottery sherds, from a dozen vessels, mainly coarse cooking wares. The generally rounded rims are similar to potery from the earliest broch layers at Dun Vulan. They may be ascribed to the Late Bronze Age on the basis of a TL date of 2860 +/- 260 (1170-650 BC).
Sponsor: Historic Scotland.
M Parker Pearson, J Mulville and T Roper 1995.

NF 733 336-NF 758 140 Almost half of the South Uist machair has been surveyed between 1993 and 1995, in a single stretch from West Kilbride in the extreme S of the island to the N of the Ard Michael promontory, a distance of 20km with the width of the machair averaging about 1km (see unpublished reports, Department of Archaeology, University of Sheffield). Existing RCAHMS records for prehistoric and early historic settlement sites number some 20 locations within this zone. The machair project has now increased this number to 81. Two of the RCAHMS sites, the broch/dun at Orosay (NF71NW 5) and the broch of Dun Ruaidh (NF72SW 7), are misidentifications.
The area most responsive to field survey on the machair is the section between Kildonan and Stoneybridge, the N 5km portion of the survey area. Here, where most of the surviving machair plain has not been covered by dunes, some 44 sites have been recognised. along with a grouping of Late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age settlement mounds in the Kildonan area, the main settlement pattern is a set of clusters of Iron Age to Viking Age settlement mounds for each of the five townships. These Iron Age-Viking Age clusters may be viewed as predecessors to the township system first mapped in 1805 and still in use today.
A second concentration of sites has been found further S in the machair of Daliburgh and Kilpheder, where a total of 19 sites have been discovered in an area of 3 square kilometres. This density is all the more remarkable given the large extent of dune incursion on to the machair plain in this area. Within this zone two key house sites, both well preserved, have been excavated. One is Kilpheder wheelhouse (NF72SW 1) of Middle Iron Age date and the other is the Cladh Hallan double roundhouse (NF 7305 2203) of Late Bronze Age date. The most remarkable feature of prehistoric settlement in this area is the 500m long string of Late Bronze Age/Early Iron Age settlement W of the modern cemetery. However, there is considerable potential for good preservation, as indicated by the 1994-95 excavations.
The results of the recent survey are by no means exhaustive but they do indicate a remarkable density of later prehistoric and early historic settlements on the machair. The pattern of proto-townships throughout the survey area holds reasonably well but there are gaps for the townships of Garrynamonie and Garryheillie.
Sponsor: Historic Scotland.
M Parker Pearson 1995.

An unusual ?figure-of-eight? stone-walled house (House 112) was excavated by Sheffield University W of Cladh Hallan in 1994 and 1995 (see unpublished reports, Dept Archaeology, Sheffield University). The house?s abandonment is dated by TL on pottery to 2860?260 bp and by radiocarbon on articulated bone in the same deposit to 2310?65 bp. This suggests an Early Iron Age date. The house was revetted into a Late Bronze Age midden (dated by a single radiocarbon determination of 2960?75 bp, and by the presence of coarse, flat-rimmed ceramic vessels). In 1996 we excavated more of this midden (Area C) to gain more environmental samples and to cut it back so that some of it could be turfed and preserved. Amongst the large quantities of sherds, bones, shells and carbonised remains was a piece of a clay mould for casting wheel-headed pins. About 5m SE of the midden we found the missing humerus and limb bones of a juvenile, possibly a teenage girl, whose other remains had been found in 1992. Both finds are unstratified. Bones from a second body were interred in 1992 in the modern cemetery.
In 1996 we mapped the 600m long NNW?SSE spread of midden with Late Bronze Age/Early Iron Age (LBA/EIA) sherds, at the centre of which was House 112. A hundred metres SE of this there is an active sand quarry (Area A) in which a deep midden and structures are exposed. Within the centre of this quarry we located the upper walls of a large LBA/EIA double-roomed roundhouse (House 401). Its W room has a diameter of 12.1m whilst its E room is smaller, c 4m in diameter. The floor layers survive at a depth of 0.4m below the surface of the midden; the house is filled with a complex deposit of midden layers and sand lenses. As with House 112, there was no trace of internal piers inside the W room. This would suggest that the tradition of pier construction, characteristic of the Middle Iron Age wheelhouses in the Western Isles, did not extend back into the LBA/EIA.
To the N of the house, buried 0.2m below the midden?s surface, are traces of plough marks running parallel, approximately E?W and spaced c 0.10?0.15m apart. The midden layer is at least 1m deep and probably contains further stone structures. A midden layer above it has been largely destroyed by quarrying.
About 30m N of House 112, we investigated stonework exposed within a small quarry (Area B). The stones formed a rough wall which lay over a thin occupation layer. The wall may be part of a badly disturbed house or a rough field or enclosure boundary. A fired clay ball, two flint flakes and an adult human phalange came from this area.
S Atkinson, J Mulville, M Parker Pearson 1996; NMRS MS 968/4

M, J and T Parker Pearson, Mul, 1995, Discovery and Excavation, Scotland, 109 (Bibliographic reference). SWE38870.

M Parker Pearson, 1995b, Discovery and Excavation, Scotland, 110 (Bibliographic reference). SWE38871.

S, J and M Atkinson, Mulville , 1996, Discovery and Excavation, Scotland, 108-109 (Bibliographic reference). SWE39099.

Council for Scottish Archaeology, 1998, Discovery and Excavation in Scotland (Bibliographic reference). SWE41173.