Crannogs: The Search Continues

by Richard Guest

Investigating a possible crannog at Loch Morie, June 2023

Almost three years has passed since the inception of the NOSAS Crannogs project, one sunny post-lockdown afternoon sitting around my patio maintaining a 2-metre separation, unable to meet inside but mightily pleased to be chatting face to face instead of by zoom.  Who had even heard of zoom before lockdown?  We hatched a cunning plan – to search satellite images for islands which might prove to be unrecorded crannogs.  Surely there must be lots of them, secreted away in remote glens where archaeologists rarely tread?  Well, no, actually.

Movement was still restricted so there was no shortage of volunteers, happy to have something different to do at home, and we soon had plenty of islands to look at in the field.  Some were explored in 2022 but by the start of 2023 we had a shortlist of very promising looking targets which certainly looked like crannogs from the shore.  They would need snorkelling or diving around to check out their underwater credentials to be sure whether they really were artificial constructions.  There was also the Loch Achilty crannog, which had been dived and surveyed in 2022 and where timbers had been found which could potentially be radiocarbon dated (see previous blog posts here and here).

Aside from crannogs, but continuing the underwater theme, I had spent two weeks in 2022 diving HMS Natal in the Cromarty Firth as part of a Nautical Archaeology Society project.  So it was that Claire Hallybone from NAS came up to present the findings of the Natal project at a NOSAS “MAD” evening (that’s Monthly Archaeological Discussion for the uninitiated) and also to dive some real and potential crannogs with me.

It was early March and whilst the weather was conducive to a jolly evening chatting in Strathpeffer Hall, for diving – not so much.  Nevertheless, we braved a chilly Loch Achilty and were successful in obtaining a timber sample from the shallower of two embedded timbers.  It was surprisingly hard work.  I made two parallel sawcuts in the edge of the wood and then tried to chisel out the bit in between with my knife but the wood was so hard I broke the tip off my knife. Eventually the sample was obtained but it took about 40 minutes, by which time we were shivering with cold and both agreed one dive was enough for the day and the second, deeper timber would have to wait for another time.

Loch Achilty crannog: This timber was radio carbon dated to c. 1359 AD, and another to c. 1060 AD (Duncan Ross)

A few disconnected thoughts after the NOSAS trip to Tiree June 2017

by John Wombell (NOSAS)

Intertidal track ways on the Caolas peninsular

One of the intertidal track ways at Poll a Chrosan, Caolas

This is the first time that I have been aware of such features anywhere in the highlands or on other Scottish islands.  The Caolas track ways are all about 2m wide where stones have been shifted left and right through the intertidal boulder spreads and outcrops to avoid lengthy routes around the hags over the soft and fragile swards of the saltings on the high water mark.

On the east side of Fadamull islet which is connected to the main island by a tombolo (a gravel bar covered at high tide) we found 7 cleared boat landing places most of which were connected to a naturally clear beach where boats could be pulled right up out of the water by a cleared track way that ran parallel to the shore.    Otherwise the cleared landing places stopped short of the high tide mark – all rather strange as we don’t know what they were for.   There are more than a dozen short lengths of seaweed drying walls on the islet but only one possible burning pit.  Our thinking meantime is that the cleared landings were used to beach heavily laden small boats stacked to the gunwales with seaweed after which they were unloaded into carts or panniers using the intertidal track way off the sterns of the boats.  Smart thinking as taking heavy wet seaweed off the sides of a small boat and staggering up a rocky beach with it would not have been very efficient.  Whether this arrangement was purely associated with burning seaweed to produce kelp (soda ash) or for landing seaweed to be used as manure we don’t know.  A bit of both maybe?  Possibly also associated with the time when the iodine factory was functioning and calling for large supplies of seaweed.

Cleared boat landing places Fadamull islet Caolas