The Udal: Prehistory

The excavations have revealed three wheelhouses, the major structures of the Iron Age in the Western Isles; though as none of them has a hearth, the excavator does just wonder whether they were not dwellings, but more like temples. Wheel- houses come in two sizes - 11 piered and 8 piered, and this was one of the larger type, and the central one of the three.

Opposite the central pier is a jet black slim vertical stone orthostat of notably phallic aspect. If the wheelhouse is to be interpreted as a temple, then this satellite building is either a secondary chapel or perhaps even the holy of holies.

The central wheelhouse, here fully excavated. Note the entrance at the top.

Neolithic and Bronze Age

In 1974 the planned excavation programme was interrupted when a freak perihelion tide played havoc in the Western Isles; on January 8th the tide came right over the machairs and into the townships. The Udal was flooded, and a mound down by the shore was partially scoured away by the retreating water, revealing a deep archaeological stratification.

At the top, phase A was 19th and 20th century. A deep long trench went right across the tell, cutting through all earlier levels. This was a sawpit for sawing up boat wrecks - a common activity in the late 19th and early 20th century. It was dated by a collar stud found in the bottom.

Following this industrial archaeology, phase B is a Bronze Age cairn with a central cist. The cist contained a very fine skeleton (being alkaline the machair preserves bone very well) but no grave goods.

The great tide on 8th January 1974 nearly destroyed the site.

Here the Bronze Age barrow has been nearly fully excavated, though the cist still survives at the centre.

Between the Neolithic and the Bronze ages came one of the most momentous events in the landscape history of the Western Isles, the development of the shell based sand known as the machair.

What is machair? It is Gaelic for plain - but it has come to mean in English the shell sand shore plains of the Western isles.It is formed from ground up sea shells which, being calcium rich makes it highly fertile. The formation of machair is controversial, but it is surprisingly recent - it appears to have originated at the end of the last glaciation, and it has been moving eastwards (inland) and uphill ever since in response to rising sea levels.

At the Udal, the Beaker phase is the first horizon to have been formed on the machair. Below this was the Neolithic, on a black earth that is pre- or proto-machair. This neolithic phase (D) consists of houses of the Skara Brae type.

The Udal is a magic place, today totally isolated, sitting on its peninsula far from any road or track, approached only by walking over miles of the springy machair, saturated with buttercups and daisies. It is only the excavator’s encampment, hidden in the dunes, that marks the site of the settlement. But over the last 33 years, Iain Crawford has followed through his remarkable research design, and produced a long history of change and adaption that is unique in the Western Isles, - and perhaps anywhere else in the world.

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