Qualla: Bostadh (Iron Age settlement)

Bostadh (Iron Age settlement): Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nessy-Pic, CC BY-SA 3.0. The wind did the excavation. In January 1993, storm-force gales and high tides scoured nearly a metre of sand from the dune face above Bosta Beach on the island of Great Bernera. When the storm passed, locals could see stones - shoulder-high, set in lines, plainly built. A series of stone buildings emerged in a thirty-metre stretch beneath what had been an unremarkable dune. They had been buried for more than a thousand years. People had lived here in the Late Iron Age, between roughly 400 and 800 CE, and then the sea had taken the place back.

Image: Nessy-Pic | CC BY-SA 3.0

Bostadh (Iron Age settlement): Hints in the Sand

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Colin Smith, CC BY-SA 2.0. Archaeologists had suspected something at Bosta for decades. As early as 1966, midden deposits - the rubbish heaps of ancient households - were observed eroding at the base of the dunes, along with stone structures. In 1968 further erosion exposed Iron Age pottery sherds, stone i...

Image: Colin Smith | CC BY-SA 2.0

Bostadh (Iron Age settlement): The Storm of 1993

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Colin Smith, CC BY-SA 2.0. The January storm did what decades of slow erosion had only hinted at. A metre of dune face vanished, the beach itself dropped roughly a metre, and a wall of stone buildings emerged over thirty metres of newly exposed coastline. The walls were heavy - over a metre thick in most p...

Image: Colin Smith | CC BY-SA 2.0

Bostadh (Iron Age settlement): Lives Around the Hearth

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Colin Smith, CC BY-SA 2.0. Three of the five houses excavated date to the 1st millennium CE and share clear architectural features. They are stone roundhouses, each with a south-facing entrance and at least one annex room. The walls have drystone faces inside and out, packed with sand and midden material i...

Image: Colin Smith | CC BY-SA 2.0

Bostadh (Iron Age settlement): The Norse Layer

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nessy-Pic, CC BY-SA 3.0. Above House 1, three sides of a later rectangular building emerged, surviving only to two courses of stone. Its associated midden flowed downhill from the structure and overlapped the sand infill of House 3. A fragment of a steatite bowl with rivet holes in this later midden gave...

Image: Nessy-Pic | CC BY-SA 3.0

Bostadh (Iron Age settlement): The House You Can Walk Into

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nessy-Pic, CC BY-SA 3.0. Beside the original site stands a reconstruction. Built using techniques that would have been familiar to the original inhabitants, the new Iron Age house first wore a thatched roof secured with ropes and stone weights. Wind and weather forced a switch to turf - more durable in H...

Image: Nessy-Pic | CC BY-SA 3.0