Hebridean Archaeological Sites
Allt Easdal, Barra (with audio)
Main Article
At Allt Easdal, there are excavated remains of Neolithic huts, an Iron Age wheelhouse, and a late 18th-early 19th century blackhouse and outbuildings, clustered in and around a narrow valley with a small stream - Allt Easdal.
Neolithic people settled here around 4000 BC and built an artificial platform behind a terrace wall. A later blackhouse stands on part of this platform, but behind it, Neolithic remains were found almost undisturbed. Occupation lasted here for well over a thousand years, beginning with an oval timber-framed hut. About 150m uphill are two huts dating to the end of the Neolithic occupation. Although the bigger hut was only about 3m in diameter inside, it was almost certainly lived in for some time because its floor had become worn and sunken from wear and domestic rubbish including bits of pottery and flint had been swept up and thrown down the slope outside the front door. A hearth was placed just to the right of the door. Tacked onto the back wall of the hut was a stone-built box or cist perhaps used for storage. In it an almost complete beaker with attractive impressed decoration was found. The smaller circular stone hut was probably used as a storage place.
There is no trace of occupation at Allt Easdal from soon after 2500 BC until about the 1st century BC. A circular roundhouse was built at this time, about 8 metres diameter inside, but it was soon replaced and mostly destroyed by a more substantial house. This thick-walled aisled roundhouse, had its entrance to the south and the interior divided up into separate spaces by seven free-standing piers, which also helped to support the roof. The central area was occupied by a huge hearth over 2 metres square, which when excavated had a deep mound of ashes in it.
Later, the building was modified by blocking the old doorway and making a new one on the west side, and by extending the piers to meet the circuit wall, so that the aisle around the edge of the room disappeared. The old hearth was replaced by a smaller circular one. Eventually the house was abandoned, but the collapsed mound of stone was re-used as a temporary camp site in the centuries that followed and a small Norse period shieling hut was built on the mound. That in turn was followed by a larger but still rather ephemeral medieval hut. Eventually a small blackhouse was built onto the back of the mound, and its foundations are still visible.
By this time, a much larger blackhouse (one of the biggest blackhouses found on Barra) and outbuildings had been erected on the site first occupied by the Neolithic settlers almost four thousand years before. It was built in the late 18th century and abandoned by its occupant, James Campbell, c 1830. The house, like most blackhouses on Barra, was originally a single room, with an earth floor and a cobbled hearth towards the west end. A stack of peat was found on the floor against the wall nearby. A small rotary millstone lay on the floor in the corner. Opposite the door was a kerbed rectangular platform, possibly the location of a bed-box but more likely built to take a home-built dresser on which the best crockery could be displayed. The partition wall at the east end of the house was a late addition and there is no evidence that the small room it created was ever intended to house animals.
In fact, a byre to overwinter a few animals was built alongside the house. It had a door in one corner through which a drain exited. A barn was built up downslope from the house which had a raised platform with a central flue at one end where barley and oats could be dried after harvesting.
Audio Interpretations
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Related Events
Some important events in Hebridean history happened at this location. For more details on these events, see the list below, or go to the Interactive Explorer.
SMR Database Entries
Comhairle nan Eilean Siar has an extensive online Sites and Monuments Records database, with in-depth details about the historical, cultural and archaeological sites and monuments in the Hebrides. This site is featured in this database, and the list below gives links to read more. These links will open in a new browser window / tab.
