Audio cassette recording of a talk `The Archaeology of Tiree` by Professor Steven Mithen in An Talla, Crossapol on 26/8/2004.
Talk ‘The Archaeology of Tiree’ given by Professor Steven Mithen of Reading University in An Talla in August 2004 and introduced by Dr John Holliday. Prof. Mithen talks about the earliest settlers in the Southern Hebrides around 6000BC, their probable lifestyle and tools, the traces they’ve left such as flints, bone tools, middens and charcoal deposits, the survey work the Reading team have been conducting on Tiree including ground penetrating radar and peat cores and the work they hope to do on Tiree in the future.
Paperback book `The Archaeology of Skye and the Western Isles` by Ian Armit.
The hsitory of human settlement in Skye and the Western Isles from the first hunter-gatherers to the Clearances, based on the results of new excavations and surveys and reassessments of earlier work.
Photocopied handwritten notes and sketches made by Dr Euan MacKie on 25/7/2000 of George Holleyman`s collections.
Handwritten notes and sketches made by Dr Euan MacKie on 25/7/2000 of the pot shards and flints collected by George Holleyman in Balephuil and Balevullin in 1941-1943.
These flints are almost certainly of Mesolithic age, that is, made by the hunter-gatherer groups who populated Scotland before the arrival of the first farmers in the 4th millennium BC. Microlithic (small stone) tools like this were used all over northern and western Europe at this time.
Measuring 27-55 millimetres in length, the six scrapers have been given a sharp, curved edge by pressure-flaking and were probably used to dress hides. The slim boring tool also has pressure-flaking along the long edges. The flint core has had several parallel-sided flakes, known as ‘blades’, struck off the flat area.
The flints were found in a sand-hill site at Balephuill 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.
Illustrated colour guide to a 30 mile walk around Tiree linking many places of Christian and pre-Christian significance and introducing visitors to the island`s rich natural heritage abundant in bird and plant life.
