Unival

Unival, a small, roughly-built, square passage grave lies on an elevated plateau on the hill of the same name, and, as Beveridge noted, carries the Gaelic name, ‘Leacach an Tigh Chloiche’, or ‘place of slabs of the stone house’. Excavated by Sir Lindsay Scott during the 1930s, it was found to house a small slab-built cist about 0.5 metres high, in which was the skeleton of a young woman, together with the rib-bones of a younger person, who may have been buried earlier. Ian Armit noted that it appeared that burning charcoal had been tipped onto the skeleton a long time after its burial, suggesting visits to the tomb for ritual purposes other than burial. Amongst the numerous finds of local pottery, discovered by Scott, the rarest was an almost complete Grooved Ware bowl and fragments of a beaker. These were common to later Neolithic finds across the mainland, suggesting the tomb continued to be used for burials well into the Bronze Age.

Tha uamh bheag chearnach air cliathaich Uineabhal air a bheil Leacach an Taigh Cloiche. Chladhaich Sir Lindsay Scott e anns na tricheadan agus fhuair e ciste bheag mu leth meatair a dh’àird anns an robh cnamhan boireannach òg agus asnaichean neach nas òige a chaidh an tiodhlacadh roimhe sin. Thug Ian Armit an aire gun robh luatha fiodh-loisgte air a chòpadh air na cnàmhan ùine mhòr as deidh an tiodhlacadh, a’ sealltainn gu robh e air a chleachdadh airson adhbharan deas-ghnàthach. An luib na fhuair Scott de spealgan phiogachan bha bobhla cha mhòr slàn agus pìosan cupa. Bha a leithid seo cumanta ann an làraich Linn Nuadh na Cloiche air feadh tìr-mòr ag innse gun robh an uamh air a’ cleachdadh airson tiodhlacan ann an Linn an Umha.