Artefacts with the human remains in Area C. In: Lelong, O 2018 'Fluid identities, shifting sands: Early Bronze Age burials at Cnip Headland, Isle of Lewis'. Scottish Archaeology Internet Report 75
2018
Excavations in 2009 and 2010 on Cnip Headland,
Isle of Lewis investigated three different burials in
shallow pits and on a kerbed mound, containing the
inhumed remains of at least nine individuals in both
articulated and disarticulated states. Bone histology
analysis indicates that the bodies of all but one (a
stillborn infant) were allowed to decay and become
partly or wholly skeletonised before being buried
at this spot. Worn jet beads, a copper-alloy awl and
pieces of boar tusk and marine ivory accompanied
some of the remains. The burials lay around a cairn,
which previous excavations have shown was built
in the 3rd millennium bc and then rebuilt twice,
with both cremated and unburnt human remains
incorporated in it. Another inhumation burial in
a stone-lined pit close to the cairn was excavated
in the 1990s. Bayesian analysis indicates that
the cairn’s first reconstruction and the placing of
human remains around it took place over a period
of up to 150 years between 1770 and 1620 bc.
The headland’s long use for rites involving human
remains illuminates relationships between living
communities and their lineages in Early Bronze Age
north-west Scotland. The work was carried out for
Historic Environment Scotland under the Human
Remains Call-off Contract.
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