THE ancient residents of the Outer Hebrides suffered the effects of climate change, which devastated their homes and saw them suffer periods of starvation, according to new research.
Archaeological research centring on excavations at the Udal site in North Uist has revealed some of the hardships of life in Neolithic and early Bronze Age Scotland.
Two burial cairns at the Udal were found to hold the remains of individuals dating to the second millennium BC. Scientific analyses of the two people have shown the dramatic effect that environmental stresses had on the community.
Excavations revealed the archaeological remains of two round buildings dating to between 3000 and 2500 BC. Analysis of the artefacts found there show butchering of animals, pottery-making and quartz tool manufacture took place on site.
Beverley Ballin Smith of GUARD Archaeology, who has been leading the post-excavation work, said: “The two houses may have been the last surviving structures of a larger settlement that was covered over by a thick layer of blown sand, like Skara Brae on Orkney.
“The storm that brought the sand covered fields and grazing lands in addition to the village, from dunes to the west. The effects were so severe that the buildings and the farming land had to be abandoned and people moved inland. How long it took the sand to consolidate before it could be used for grazing and agriculture is not known, but marks from an ard plough showed that fields had extended much further west and north than the coastline does today.”
According to GUARD, the blown sand was only part of the environmental story as another severe storm later brought a flood that destroyed the new fields by depositing a thick stone and shingle beach across them.
By this time the coastal landscape was in flux and was in the process of being dramatically transformed, and the archaeological evidence reveals that these environmental hardships had a severe effect on the health of local inhabitants.
Scientific analysis of the teeth of two skeletons buried on the site indicated they had suffered a lack of food as children, even periods of starvation, and shell fish such as whelks may have become a staple food stuff.
Ballin Smith added: “Our Neolithic and Bronze Age ancestors lived through climate change events such as dramatic sea-level rise and increased storminess, and trauma such as loss of fields, crops and animals. They had to relocate their settlement and houses to safer areas.”
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