Find Spot record 1702 - KNEEP, VALTOS, LEWIS

NB13NW 13 100 365.

In May 1991, the site of a burial of presumed Viking-age date was found by two teenagers in a blow-out on Kneep headland, uphill from the find-spot of the rich female Viking burial discovered in 1979 (NB03NE 15). Although the skull area had been disturbed by erosion and at the time of discovery, the prompt reporting of this find permitted full recording of the grave. Excavation revealed the crouched burial of a child of about six years, which appears to have been deposited immediately behind a large rock in a shallow grave-pit scooped in a layer of wind-blown sand, representing the fossil subsoil of an old ground surface. In this case, the only artefacts likely to have been deposited with the burial were an amber bead and a stone pendant.
T G Cowie 1991a; 1991b.

T G Cowie, 1991a, Discovery and Excavation, Scotland, 75 (Bibliographic reference). SWE18551.

T G Cowie, 1991b, Hebridean Naturalist, 31-4 (Bibliographic reference). SWE18552.

I Armit, 1994, Proc Soc Antiq Scot, No.22 (Bibliographic reference). SWE34817.