Two bone limpet scoops. Balephuil.
Note from Dr Darko Maricevic: ‘This is from the journal Archaeometry 42.2, comments by Alan Saville who submitted them for C14 dating:
‘A bevel-ended bone tool collected in 1953 by W. A. Munro from eroding ‘midden’ deposits at Balephuil Bay, Isle of Tiree, Argyll, Scotland (NGR NL 955 407), and acquired by the National Museums of Scotland. Submitted by A. Saville, Archaeol. Dept, Nat. Mus. Scotland, Edinburgh. OxA-7887 bone, X.AB.2946/1, 8″ C=- 20.4%0 3010 i 50 Commenr (A. S.): one of two bevel-ended bone tools collected by Mr Munro together with ‘fragments of flint … and many sherds … of primitive pottery’. The pottery does not survive and the flints are undiagnostic. The bone tools are regarded as potentially Mesolithic on typological grounds, although no other evidence for Mesolithic presence on Tiree is known. This assay is of considerable interest in providing the most recent date for this artefact type, which is now shown to survive until at least the end of the second millennium cal BC. Together with the evidence of two Neolithic dates for bevel-ended bone tools from An Corran rockshelter on Skye (Saville in Ashmore 1998). this date shows clearly that when future finds of these implements are made in Scotland they can no longer be regarded simplistically as Mesolithic indicators.’ Calibrated date is 1410-1060 cal BC (95.4%), so Late Bronze Age. There are comparably late examples from An Corran on Skye, as well as the pebble assemblage from Caolas an-Eilean on Coll I excavated and also from Sorisdale. These are earlier, probably late 3rd mill. BC. ‘Limpet scoops/hammers’ is catch-all term and many probably wouldn’t have anything to do with limpets.’