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Excavations at Kilpheder, South Uist, and the problem of Brochs and Wheel-houses

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 May 2014

T. C. Lethbridge
T. C. Lethbridge
Affiliation:
University Museum of Archœology and Ethnology, Cambridge
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Extract

In 1951 Dr Werner Kissling, who for many years has been studying and collecting specimens of the old folk culture of the Outer Hebrides, asked me to undertake the excavation of some site on South Uist (fig. 1) to encourage the local people to take an interest in their antiquities. The site chosen was a large midden among the dunes in the Kilpheder machair (sandy coastal plain). Five hundred yards to the northward a midden with a few stones is all that remains of a wheel-house, known as Bruthach an Tigh Tallan (the brae of the buried house), which was completely removed some years ago. Half a mile to the north of this another wheel-house, Sithean a Phiobaire (the piper's fairy hill), was removed to build a wall round a nearby grave-yard. The middens of both these wheel-houses have produced ring-headed bronze or iron pins similar to ones found in the North Uist wheel-houses and approximately dated at Traprain Law in Haddingtonshire to between A.D. 100–200. To the south-west of our site, one about 150 yards distant, the other some 200 yards further on, are two more middens with traces of building stones. One of these produced a specimen of the well-known long-handled weaving comb. Yet another midden of the same period, two hundred yards to the south east, is now completely buried. It will be seen that this was once a highly populated area. I have not enumerated all the sites which are known to exist.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society , Volume 18 , Issue 2 , December 1953 , pp. 176 - 193
Copyright
Copyright © The Prehistoric Society 1952

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References

page 176 note 1 ‘The Outer Hebrides, Skye and the Small Isles,’ figs. 11 and 171, Roy. Comm. Anc. Mon. Scotland, Edinburgh, 1928Google Scholar.

page 182 note 1 J. Curle, A Roman Frontier Post and its People, Pl. LXXXVI, no. 24.

page 182 note 2 Roman Britain, p. 255.

page 184 note 1 North Uist, pl. facing p. 206. Edinburgh, 1911.

page 184 note 2 PSAS, XLIX (1915), 172Google Scholar, fig. 25, no. 3.

page 185 note 1 See PPS, XIV (1948)Google Scholar, pl. X, nos. 1 and 4.

page 185 note 2 The earliest object so far recovered from a wheel-house to which an approximate date may be given is the carved bone ornament from Bac Mhic Connain in North Uist (PSAS, LXVI, fig. 14). This has been rightly compared with bronze trace loops from Stanwick in Yorkshire, which are believed to date a little before A.D. 60. It is impossible to estimate the time lag before such things could be copied in the Hebrides.

page 188 note 1 Reference should here be made to SirScott, Lindsay's paper in PPS, XIV (1948), 46–125Google Scholar.

page 189 note 1 The free-hand drawing of these stags argues considerable practise in the art of drawing. It seems possible to observe here the beginnings of a style which was later to influence the carvings on the so-called ‘Pictish’ stones.

page 190 note 1 Beveridge, Erskine, Coll and Tiree, fifth of the plates opposite p. 174. Edinburgh, 1903Google Scholar.

page 190 note 2 PPS, XIII, 1–36Google Scholar; XIV, 46–125.

page 191 note 1 cf. Ridgeway, , Early Age of Greece, vol. II, p. 39Google Scholar.

page 193 note 1 I cannot accept Captain Thomas' reconstruction of the Uisnish wheel-house with its corbelled central room. On his own plan, which is in itself far from accurate (comp. PPS, XIV, fig. 8, p. 70 and fig. 171 of The Outer Hebrides, Skye and the Small Isles), only three complete pier bases and two incomplete specimens are shown. He could only have inferred a corbelled roof.