Monument record 1547 - ALLT CHRISAL, BARRA

NL69NW 7.15 6419 9782

T18: shelter or storehouse. Site T18 is a small circular stone-built hut or shelter foundation with a 1.8m internal diameter floor space. The walls are constructed of stone blocks up to 0.4m in size and are standing to several courses high in places around its internal circumference on the N and W sides. It is situated S of, and close to, the foundation walls of a substantial stone-built roundhouse (T19), with which it may be associated.
Excavations in 1993 revealed that, for most of the circumference, the hut wall was a solid construction of stone and earth 0.6m thick. The N portion of the wall is embedded into the hillside to counter the hill slope, but in general there was little effort to provide a level foundation for the hut. A substantial linear pile of stone blocks and small boulders dumped to the S and in front of the hut does not appear to create a usable platform for the hut itself, but it may have been required in order to form a solid basis for an entrance area. Several stones stand prominent along the top of this deposit of rock and earth and appear to be purposely laid to form a wall, to which the E wall of the hut was most likely connected. This would form a protective porch, but like the inferred wall on the pile, much of the E wall of the hut has become displaced by animal burrowing and at the critical point of this junction the stonework is missing.
Excavation of the interior and surrounding area of the hut revealed no archaeological layers of substance below the turf and recent infill of hillwash silts and wind blown sand. This layer was variable in thickness from 0.5 to 0.3m, and consisted of a very gritty, sandy, leached soil which contained nodules of mineralised iron in its lower portions. Below this was a grey, gritty, stony layer of leached bedrock colluvial deposit. There was considerable evidence for animal burrowing to the extent that little in situ soil remained intact and any layers that may have existed once had become so re-worked that they had lost all archaeological value.
Fourteen pieces of worked flint were found in the upper soil levels which could be either residual material washing down from the large stone-built roundhouse T19 situated on the hillside immediately above, or from soils upcast by burrowing in the lower levels of the site. Only eight fragments of flint were recovered from deposits below the topsoil layer, but because of the amount of animal activity involved within the deposits of T18 it is difficult to be certain of the true contextual nature of any of the material.
The substantial method by which the superstructure of the hut is built suggests an early date for its construction since most of the hut/shelter buildings recorded in the survey that are of modern date are of insubstantial construction. Also the stone and boulder revetment piled across the slope of the hillside in front of the hut and underlying the porch wall is outside the normal practice and tradition of normal shelter construction. The expenditure of time and energy required to construct this feature is of a magnitude more in keeping with earlier periods, when it is not an uncommon practice, as the excavations of the prehistoric levels at T19 and T26 show, to construct such crude but substantial revetting across the slope of the hillside as an early stage in construction work.
The absence of any of modern material compared with the presence of flintwork, whatever the stratigraphical problems are, is also highly suggestive of prehistoric rather than recent use.
The function of this structure is less of a problem since its smallness in diameter is well within the parameters needed to suggest that it was either a storage or shelter facility.
K Branigan and P Foster 1995; NMRS MSS. 595/3, 595/8 and 595/9.

The monument known as Alt Chrisal, multi-period settlement 750m ESE of Gortein, Barra, comprises the remains of a multi-period settlement site that also includes some evidence for prehistoric ritual activity. Survey & excavations between 1989 and 1994, by Sheffield University, found evidence for settlement dating from the Neolithic (about 3600 years BC) to the 18th and 19th centuries. The stone-built elements of the excavated structures are still largely visible on site today, where not destroyed by the road and sheep pen. The area to be scheduled is irregular, with maximum dimensions of 300m NNW-SSE by 270m NNE-SSW, to include the main focus of surviving above-ground structures at Alt Chrisal and an area in which evidence related to their construction and use may survive. The fenceline along the roadside and around the sheep pen (which forms the S boundary of the site) is excluded from the scheduling, to allow for maintenance.
HS scheduling document, 8.11.2005

K. Brannigan & P. Foster, 1995, Barra: archaeological research on Ben Tangaval from the end of the Ice Age to the Crofting Commissio, pp. 35, 51, 55-6 figs. 4.1, 4.3 and 4.4 (Bibliographic reference). SWE33223.