32969: BHALTOS – CAIRN (Undated), CAIRN (Undated), CINERARY URN (Undated)

Summary:

CAIRN (Undated)
CAIRN (Undated)
CINERARY URN (Undated)
Bronze Age cairn

Location:

NB 0995 3639

Full description:

NB03NE 11 0995 3639.

The cairn at Cnip was noted by R B K Stevenson in 1972 and again by W F Cormack in 1973 (see NB03NE 14). It may be one of the sites seen "near Berie Beach" in 1936 by Lacaille (1937), but his directions are vague. In 1972 only part of the cairn showed through the sand as an irregular oval of boulders, and this led Stevenson to suggest that it might be a Viking grave, and to recommend excavation before it eroded further.
It was excavated in 1976 and 1978 and proved to be a Bronze Age cairn of three periods, each associated with a burial, overlying a ploughed soil. The first burial was an inhumation in a short cist under an unusual D-shaped cairn with a well-defined kerb. This cairn was disturbed when a hole was dug through it for a small corbelled cist containg a cremation urn. Finally a kerb cairn with two concentric kerbs was built over the earlier structures. Within the central ring of the kerb cairn was an un-urned cremation burial.
J Close-Brooks 1995

no. 2
This is the site of a small Bronze Age kerb cairn excavated in 1976 and 1978 by Dr Joanna Close-Brooks and shortly to be published (Close-Brooks forthcoming). The ciarn was found to contain three burial phases. It overlies a buried organic soil which contained ard marks. The site was originally exposed in the eroding sand dune section which is presently progressing up Cnip headland. In the fifteen years since excavation, the erosion face has progressed rapidly in the surrounding area and has moved by an estimated 10m. At the same time, the cairn has been uundercut by sand deflation and the kerbstones are now collapsing . In 1992 a further Bronze Age burial in a corbelled cist, which was not exposed during the 1970s excavations, was excavated by the Centre for Field ARchaeology (Dunwell forthcoming).
Armit 1992, 39

References:

1936-7. ‘A stone industry at, potsherds and a bronze pin from Valtos, Uig, Lewis’, Proc Soc Antiq Scot. Part No 71. 279-82
1976. ‘Lewis, Valtos, Uig, Kneep Headland, kerb cairn’, Discovery and Excavation, Scotland. 56-7
1978. ‘Kneep, Uig, Isle of Lewis, Ross-shire, NB 099 363’, Proc Prehist Soc. Part No 44. 446
1978. ‘Lewis, Valtos, cairn’, Discovery and Excavation, Scotland. 34
1978-80. ‘Donations to and purchases for the Museum and Library’, Proc Soc Antiq Scot. Part No 110. 535
Ian Armit. 1992. CFA, University of Edinburgh Archaeological Field Survey of the Bhaltos (Valtos) Peninsula, Lewis.
1994. ‘Archaeological field survey of the Bhaltos (Valtos) peninsula, Lewis’, Proc Soc Antiq Scot. Part No 124. No.2, 74, 75, 91
1995. ‘A cist burial adjacent to the Bronze Age cairn at Cnip, Uig, Isle of Lewis’, Proc Soc Antiq Scot. Part No 125. 279, 287
Joanna Close-Brooks. 1995. ‘Excavation of a cairn at Cnip, Uig, Isle of Lewis’, Proc Soc Antiq Scot. Part No 125.

Acknowledgement:

Information provided by Western Isles Council Sites & Monuments Record, January 2006.