Dun Mor Vaul: DES 1962

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DUN MOR VAUL From E. W. MacKie

NM04204925. Excavations were carried out for four weeks in August on Dun Mor under the auspices of the Hunterian Museum, with the aid of a grant from Glasgow University and with the assistance of an average of about twenty volunteers, mostly from England.
The site, which Beveridge (1) described as a semi-broch, consists of a circular fort of dry-stone masonry with an external diameter of from 55 to 60 feet and an internal one of from 31 to 33 feet. It is surrounded by an outwork wall of similar masonry which is 84 feet thick at one point and the whole occupies a rocky knoll overlooking the sea. The central dun possesses several
broch-like features including an entrance passage with door- checks, pivot stone, one bar-hole and a guard cell opening off it, a scarcement ledge about 5 1/2 feet above the floor, a battered exterior wall-face and a continuous mural chamber running round the structure at ground level, entered by two doorways from the interior and containing a staircase.
A secondary wall had been built against the interior face of the dun wall and it seems probable that an aisled wheel house had been constructed inside. Large quantities of pottery and artefacts analogous to those recovered from the Clettraval wheelhouse in N Uist (2) were found. A short account of the work has appeared elsewhere.
Work will be resumed next summer.
(1) Erskine Beveridge, “Coll and Tiree,” pp. 76-8 (1903)
(2) Sir Lindsay Scott, ” Gallo British Colonies “, Proc. Preh. Soc., vol. 14, (1948), pp. 46-95.

Discovery and Excavation in Scotland 1962, pp. 21–2.

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