Monument record 2110 - BEN TANGAVAL, BARRA

NL69NW 85 633 998

See also NL69NW 84.

T211: Found during survey in 1991 and excavated in 1992, this was a small multicellular structure, built into the back of a small hillock.
Excavation revealed three small chambers in a NE-SW alignment, each formed by excavating a trench into peat and lining it with drystone walling. Each chamber had a well-defined entrance, two with thresholds and the other two with upright jambs. The only artefact found associated with the structures was a wooden peg with a small perforation in its head preserved in the peat at the base of the wall in the central chamber. To the N of the central chamber on the topsoil overlying the rock, but covered by heather, a base from a mid-19th century glazed bowl was found.
This site looks like a shieling, with small semi-subterranean chambers barely large enough to do more than sleep in, and lacking any signs of permanent occupation.
The radiocarbon date for the peg has yielded the following calibrated determination (to 1 sigma): GU-3437 BP 320-200 (AD 1523-1666). Since the peg was found at the very base of the chamber wall and must have been dropped while the cabins were in use and before any infill had begun to accumulate, this suggests that the chambers were probably occupied sometime in the 16th-17th centuries AD. The peat infill and development of a thin topsoil probably point to a prolonged period od abandonment and decay.
Wheter the basal sherd of the mid-19th century bowl has any connection at all with the monument is uncertain, but if so it can only refer to occasional and sporadic visits by crofters and others long after the chambers had been abandoned and infilled.
K Branigan 1992; K Branigan and P Foster 1995; NMRS, MS/595/8.

K Branigan, 1992b, Discovery and Excavation, Scotland, 87 (Bibliographic reference). SWE25416.

K. Brannigan & P. Foster, 1995, Barra: archaeological research on Ben Tangaval from the end of the Ice Age to the Crofting Commissio, 46, 183-4 figs. 5.14 and 5.15 (Bibliographic reference). SWE33223.