A cist burial adjacent to the Bronze Age cairn at Cnip, Uig, Isle of Lewis

A Bronze Age cist inhumation lying c 5m from a multi-phase cairn on Cnip headland was excavated in 1992, following its exposure as a result of erosion of the machair. The flexed skeleton of a mature adult male, which was accompanied by an undiagnostic plain pottery vessel, showed significant facial trauma. A radiocarbon determination indicates that the burial took place in the middle of the second millennium BC, at broadly the same time as an inurned cremation was inserted into the adjacent cairn. This evidence appears to reflect a more widespread pattern of heterogeneity in funerary traditions, although attempts at regional synthesis in the Western Isles are hampered by the preponderance in the data set of sites with scant records which were discovered long ago. More recent work has started to overcome this problem. The project was sponsored by Historic Scotland.