Former chemistry teacher Harry Kelly of Glasgow was recorded in April 2000 talking to Dr John Holliday about the time he spent in the early 1960s as a volunteer at the excavation of the Iron Age broch at Vaul.
When his tent was washed out by rain soon after his arrival, Harry was offered lodgings by Catriona MacKinnon of Rhum View in Vaul. Catriona was a mine of information about life on Tiree in the 1930s.
Much to Harry’s surprise, she had made her own pottery from local clay and dyed cloth with lichens. In this clip, Harry talks about the method she used to make pots.
Dr Euan MacKie , archaeologist and leader of the excavation of the broch at Vaul, giving a talk there in July 2000.
Dr MacKie excavated Dun Mor Vaul in the 1960s. The broch measures 9.2 m in internal diameter with dry-stone walls up to 4.5 m thick and once probably 8 m high. Built around the middle of the 1st century AD, the absence of a permanent central hearth suggests it was used originally as a temporary refuge. The upper storeys of the broch were subsequently dismantled and a round-house, possibly an aisled wheel-house, constructed in the interior. It housed a flourishing community engaged in mixed farming, iron-working and bronze-casting. A number of worked bone, pottery, metal and worked stone artefacts were discovered during excavation and are now held in the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow. Radiocarbon dating of organic material indicates that the site was inhabited from the late 6th or 5th century BC to the 2nd or 3rd century AD, though perhaps not continuously.
