Archaeology Course

On Saturday, the Kilchoan Learning Centre hosted a second course run by Archaeology Scotland's Adopt a Monument scheme's Phil Richardson and Cara Jones.  The morning was spent outlining plans for work that could be done at Camas nan Geall, though everything we do there will be tightly controlled by Historic Scotland.  We then looked at photos of some of the 70+ sites on West Ardnamurchan which the Ardnamurchan Community Archaeology group have so far described, with course leaders Phil and Cara helping us to understand what we have found.

This was followed, in the afternoon, by visits to two of the sites.  Top picture shows the group standing in a 9m diameter stone circle near the Caim sheds.  This was identified as a hut circle, the stones forming the low walls of a conical hut, probably of either late bronze or iron age - so it's some 3,000 years old.

The group then moved to an area of half a dozen small stone structures which were probably the small, temporary huts of a pre-clearance shieling - that is, a summer camp to which a village's animals were moved while crops were grown in the inbye land.

One of the things that seemed to be conspicuously missing was a water supply, until a well was found in this marshy area when one of the group nearly fell into it.  The well is a metre in diameter and about 75cm deep, with a gravel bottom.

As we returned to the cars we witnessed one of the largest traffic jams of recent times.  As well as our cars, there were the six minibuses of the Glasgow University geology field trip which comes here every year, and two slightly puzzled cyclists.

Many thanks to Phil and Cara for an excellent course, and to Pat Glenday at the Kilchoan Learning Centre for the usual excellent arrangements.