Hundreds of crannogs have been identified within the lochs and inlets of Scotland, with a particular concentration in the Outer Hebrides, while examples are also known in Ireland and Wales. Many of these sites have never been scientifically investigated, and it was long thought that they had been built and used between the Iron Age and the post-medieval period. This picture began to change, though, in the 1980s, when the excavation of Eilean Domhnuill in Loch Olabhat on North Uist produced evidence suggesting that it had been created in the Neolithic period, between 3800 and 3300 BC (see CA 127). For decades, Eilean Domhnuill remained a unique case – but, from 2012 onwards, a local diver, Chris Murray, reported finding Neolithic pots scattered on loch beds around crannogs on the Isle of Lewis, and subsequent investigations confirmed that these sites were similarly early in construction (CA 325 and 354).
Further clues emerged during underwater surveys and excavations led by Professor Duncan Garrow (University of Reading) and Professor Fraser Sturt (University of Southampton) in 2016-2017, and since 2021 the Islands of Stone project (carried out by both universities, funded by the AHRC) has focused on one particular crannog in Lewis’s Loch Bhorgastail. There, the team have carried out excavations, coring, surveying, and radiocarbon dating, and the results of these investigations (recently described in a paper published in the journal Advances in Archaeological Practice; see ‘Further reading’ below), have revealed the crannog’s construction and chronology in illuminating detail.
(Re)Constructing a crannog
Thanks to the project’s findings, we now know that the first phase of the Loch Bhorgastail crannog was created over 5,000 years ago, and, although the above-water portion of the island resembles a stone cairn, its original incarnation was timber. The first clues to this construction emerged in 2021, when an initial small trench (rather unexpectedly) revealed layers of brushwood and silt beneath the crannog’s stone ‘base’. Promisingly, these remains were associated with numerous sherds of Neolithic pottery, hinting that this site, too, could have early origins – and after expanding the trench in 2023 the team confirmed that the timbers expanded far beyond the outline of the stone island.
