33088: KNEEP, VALTOS, LEWIS – BURIAL (Undated)

Summary:

BURIAL (Undated)
Viking Age child burial

Location:

NB 09988 36437

Full description:

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.

References:

1991. ‘The discovery of a child burial of probable Viking-age date on Kneep Headland, Lewis, 1991: preliminary report’, Hebridean Naturalist. Part No 11. 31-4
1991. ‘Kneep Headland (Uig parish): burial, probably Viking’, Discovery and Excavation, Scotland. 75
1994. ‘Archaeological field survey of the Bhaltos (Valtos) peninsula, Lewis’, Proc Soc Antiq Scot. Part No 124. No.22

Acknowledgement:

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