Fragment of an Iron Age vase
Photograph of a fragment of an Iron Age vase.
Courtesy of Mr George Holleyman
The fragment consists of three adjoining pieces of the rim of a finely made Vaul ware vase, plain except for a single horizontal incised line apparently running right round the vessel. The sherds are orange-brown in colour and have a light grey core.
The vase would have stood about 180-200 mm high with a rim diameter of about 130-150 mm and was made by the First Iron Age, or perhaps the Late Bronze Age, inhabitants of Tiree.
The sherds were found in a sand-hill site at Balephuil in the early 1940s by George Holleyman, later a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, who was posted to RAF Tiree during World War II.