Cladh Hallan: Examining life and death in the Bronze Age and Early Iron Age

What was life like in Britain 3,000 years ago? How did people live together, find their food and materials, and organise their domestic rituals and day-to-day activities? The Bronze Age to Early Iron Age settlement of Cladh Hallan in the Outer Hebrides has provided answers, as well as new questions, as Mike Parker Pearson, Jacqui Mulville, Helen Smith, and Peter Marshall explain.

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Current Archaeology

October 1, 2025

South Uist and the other islands of the Outer Hebrides are unusually rich in archaeological remains. Since the late 1980s a major multidisciplinary project, led by the Universities of Sheffield, Cardiff, and Bournemouth, has investigated island life from prehistory to the present. With 14 research volumes now published, our second and final volume on Cladh Hallan brings together the findings from this remarkable site (see ‘Further information’ below). Preserved in the calcareous machair sand of South Uist’s west coast, Cladh Hallan’s deep stratigraphic sequence has provided layer on layer of intact house floors and walls, middens, and yard surfaces, allowing us to reconstruct how hum

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