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  • Saddle quern

    This large stone was found in a garden in Moss and is now on display in An Iodhlann. Saddle querns are thought to date from the Bronze Age. They are in two parts: the bedstone, which was a piece of local rock, too heavy to move very far, and a rubber or handstone, which was pushed up and down the groove. Experiments have shown that a saddle quern can produce fine flour from grain, the main disadvantage being that it can hold only a small amount of meal at a time, making meal production a slow business. Going from evidence from different cultures around the world, grinding was mainly women’s work. The improved round rotary quern was introduced from Europe in the Early Iron Age, around 500 BC. Indeed, an example was found by Euan MacKie in Dùn Mòr Bhalla at Vaul. Many surviving examples are broken, like this one. It may be that this was done ritually.
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  • Complete Iron Age pot

    Pot GLAHM:B.1914.535, pot 200 BC–AD 500, Middle Iron Age / Late Iron Age
    ‘This small, plain vessel is of a distinctive Iron Age fabric, being a hard-fired, smooth-surfaced ware with orange-red and dark grey exterior and buff interior. It appears to be a miniature version of the classic Everted Rim jar of the middle Iron Age in the Atlantic Province (c. 200 BC to AD 500). Although the book catalogue of the Bishop Collection gives only ‘Tiree’ as a provenance there is in fact a faded ink label on the rough part of the surface which says ‘Moss, Tiree”. This gives us a provenance probably in the 1km square NL/9644, just N of the settlement of Barrapoll at the west end of the island. A. H. Bishop was on Tiree in 1912, excavating the Iron Age settlement at Balevullin, not far away to the NNW, and one could surmise that he obtained the pot from the crofter who found it at that time. It is very rare to get a complete pot of this age which has not been put in with a burial.’
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  • Sword found 1899 in Kenovay

    Letter to Lord Archibald Campbell dated 22/9/1899 from Hugh MacDiarmid about a sword found by drainers several feet under the surface of a drained loch, Loch an Duin, in Moss [Loch an Dùin is in Kenovay], with attached photograph (poor).
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  • Possible Moss souterrain

    ‘There was man over in Moss: Lachie MacArthur. There was a big hillock at the back of the house, and it was green. And he was wanting to clear it, and spread it on the croft. When he started digging it, there was an underground house there. And he cleared it out, and he got a lot of old things in that underground house. And the factor was after him. And he sent [the finds] to Inveraray. There’s another one over in Kenovay, of the same kind.’

    Hector Kennedy talking to Eric Cregeen on SA1975.019 track ID 102451
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