Christianity ‘turned to archaeology to promote bible’ says expert
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Experts working on “the largest archaeological excavation” of Hirta, part of the St Kilda archipelago, have discovered an Iron Age settlement. The island, west of north Scotland, was home to an extensive Iron Age population 2,400 years ago, experts from Guard Archaeology discovered.
Researchers discovered shreds of pottery from the ancient inhabitants.
The pottery was unlikely found in the exact place of the settlement as it had been washed into a stone channel.
Traces of carbonised food could be found on the pottery, the researchers revealed.
Using radiocarbon dating of the food traces, researchers were able to date the settlers to between 400 and 100 BC.
The Iron Age of Britain runs from roughly 800BC until the invasion of the Romans in 43AD.
While traces of pottery with food were discovered, no housing structures were.
However, the pottery alone was enough to determine an “intensive” population across not only Hirta, but all of the St Kilda islands, based on the 2011 discovery of an Iron Age settlement on the island of Boreray.
The last residents of the St Kilda archipelago left the islands 90 years ago.
This has offered experts an almost untouched view of the islands, which are a Unesco World Heritage Site.
Alan Hunter Blair, of Guard Archaeology, said: “The recent archaeological work has revealed that the eastern end of Village Bay on St Kilda was occupied fairly intensively during the Iron Age period, although no house structures were found.
“The presence of large quantities of Iron Age pottery across the site suggests settlement must have existed nearby.
“One of the most significant problems facing archaeologists working on St Kilda is that earlier buildings were dismantled and cleared away in order to build new ones using the old stone as a building resource.
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“Stone was also cleared, including that in burial mounds to increase the available cultivation area, leaving little trace of what may have been there before.”
Susan Bain, the National Trust for Scotland’s manager for the Western Isles, said: “These results are very encouraging that the evidence of very early settlements on the islands can still be identified.
“We have tantalising glimpses of life on St Kilda 2,000 years ago, not only from their pottery but also the remains of a souterrain, or underground store that was discovered in the 19th century.
“These few clues tell us that people were well established on St Kilda as part of the wider settlement of the Western Isles.”
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