Saturday 15 June 2013

An Archaeological Mystery

From Rob Gill:

Last year on the Ardnmaurchan Transitions Team's open day I was wandering around Swordle Bay and found something odd. About a hundred meters north of the Viking burial site is a cone sheet. This has what appears to be a cup shaped melted area in it - by this I mean melted at a later date from the intrusion of the sheet. This did not strike me as of "geological" origin, so I asked one of the archeologists to have a look. He was not to be drawn for an opinion, but agreed that it was odd.

My thoughts, for what they are worth, are that it is a site where someone was smelting.  It has certainly been very hot as it would need around 1000C to melt the rock.

Many thanks to Rob for the story and pictures.
Rob runs a business from Achnaha - link here.
One of the archaeological sites excavated last year by the Ardnamurchan Transitions team, at Dun Mhurchaidh, also showed sigs of what might have been smelting - link here.

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