A Norse Settlement in the Outer Hebrides: Excavations on Mounds Mou 2 & 2A, Bornais, Born South Uist

ed edNia Niall Sharples Oxbow Books Oct 2019 201

£35 pp728 pp72 hb isbn 9781789250466 978

This is the third report from a major research project conducted principally by archaeologists from the universities of Cardiff and Sheffield, when a large, rural Norse settlement on the Atlantic coast of Bornais was examined between 1994 and 2004; 19 houses, as well as 14 other structures, were wholly or partly excavated, dating from the fifth to the 15th centuries ad. Descriptions of three house mounds have been published, in 2005 (Books Jan/Feb 2006/86) and 2012, and a further

volume about “the artefacts and economic and environmental data” is promised. This very substantial new study, with hundreds of informative diagrams and photos, documents a sequence of high status buildings in Mound 2, and an activity area in Mound 2a that in the 13th century included a workshop making combs and gaming pieces. The potential for understanding changes in communities and families from so much exhaustively detailed data is enormous, and already hinted at here.