Research Catalog

Title

Cladh Hallan : roundhouses and the dead in the Hebridean Bronze Age and Iron Age / by Mike Parker Pearson, Jacqui Mulville, Helen Smith, Peter Marshall ; with contributions by Tom Booth [and 19 others].

Author

Parker Pearson, Michael, 1957-

Publication

Oxford ; Philadelphia : Oxbow Books, 2021-

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Additional Authors

• Mulville, Jacqui
• Smith, Helen, 1956-
• Marshall, Peter (Peter D.)
• Booth, Tom

Description

volumes : illustrations (some colour); 31 cm

Summary

This first of two volumes presents the archaeological evidence of a long sequence of settlement and funerary activity from the Beaker period (Early Bronze Age c. 2000 BC) to the Early Iron Age (c. 500 BC) at the unusually long-occupied site of Cladh Hallan on South Uist in the Western Isles of Scotland. Particular highlights of its sequence are a cremation burial ground and pyre site of the 18th-16th centuries BC and a row of three Late Bronze Age sunken-floored roundhouses constructed in the 10th century BC. Beneath these roundhouses, four inhumation graves contained skeletons, two of which were remains of composite collections of body parts with evidence for post-mortem soft tissue preservation prior to burial. They have proved to be the first evidence for mummification in Bronze Age Britain.0Cladh Hallan's remarkable stratigraphic sequence, preserved in the machair sand of South Uist, includes a unique 500-year sequence of roundhouse life in Late Bronze Age and Iron Age Britain. One of the most important results of the excavation has come from intensive environmental and micro-debris sampling of house floors and outdoor areas to recover patterns of discard and to interpret the spatial use of 15 domestic interiors from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age. From Cladh Hallan's roundhouse floors we gain intimate insights into how daily life was organized within the house - where people cooked, ate, worked and slept. Such evidence rarely survives from prehistoric houses in Britain or Europe, and the results make a profound contribution to long-running debates about the sunwise organisation of roundhouse activities. Activity at Cladh Hallan ended with the construction and abandonment of two unusual double-roundhouses in the Early Iron Age. One appears to have been a smokery and steam room, and the other was used for metalworking.

Series Statement

Sheffield Environmental and Archaeological Research Campaign in the Hebrides ; volume 8

Uniform Title

Sheffield environmental and archaeological research campaign in the Hebrides (Series) ; v. 8.

Subject

• Antiquities, Prehistoric > South Uist
• Excavations (Archaeology) > South Uist
• Antiquities
• Antiquities, Prehistoric
• Excavations (Archaeology)
• Cladh Hallan (Scotland)
• South Uist (Scotland) > Antiquities
• Scotland > South Uist

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Part I. Stratigraphy, spatial organisation and chronology

ISBN

• 1789256933
• 9781789256932

LCCN

60002472848

OCLC

• on1240412904
• 1240412904
• SCSB-14207101

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries