Long tradition of occupation at Grishipoll
Fieldwork conducted by Rebecca Shaw Archaeological Services has demonstrated a tradition of continual occupation at Grishipoll on the Isle of Coll potentially stretching back to the Bronze Age. Pottery found during monitoring work conducted on the proposed redevelopment and extension of The White House, a mid-18th century Laird's house visted by Boswell and Johnson during their tour of the Western Isles, confirmed a local tradition of earlier occupation on the site.
The pottery assemblage recovered during the course of the fieldwork comprised 88 sherds, all of which were handmade. Most of the sherds were not diagnostic and were too small to determine vessel profile, though their thickness suggests that most are likely to have come from small vessels. Many of the sherds were sooted, indicating that they had been used on or near a hearth. There were six rim sherds within the assemblage which included: an everted rim; a plain sherd, possibly inverted; two flat rims, possibly from the same vessel and a third flat rim ; and a slightly splayed rim. Decoration was noted on two sherds, one of which was identified as dating to the medieval period. This lends support to the local tradition that The White House was constructed on the site of an earlier residence in use during the Middle Ages.
On one sherd, decoration comprising a row of short stabbed incisions was noted, possibly made by impressing a small bone into the surface of the damp clay, and there are traces of what is probably a similar row beneath. On a second sherd, decoration comprised a row of stab-marks along the flat part of rim. Bone impressions of this type are a typical Bronze Age decorative form, and although the sherd is very fine, it is possible that it is of prehistoric date.
The bulk of the assemblage was recovered from the area to the west of the ruin of The White House. While some of the thicker sherds might derive from prehistoric occupation, it is equally possible that much of the pottery is Norse to medieval in date. In his overview of the chronology of Hebridean pottery, Lane ('Hebridean Pottery: Problems of Definition', in Armit, I (ed) 'Beyond the Brochs: Changing Perspectives on the Atlantic Scottish Iron Age', Edinburgh University Press, 1990) notes that at Eilean Olabhat on North Uist, following primary 'Viking' occupation, a new style of pottery with sagging and flat-based bowls, cups and flat pottery discs or platters is identifiable, and subsequently sparse incised and impressed decorated wares reappear and continue in use in the medieval and later periods.
This fieldwork serves to confirm and build upon a number of chance finds made in the Grishipoll area over the last hundred years. In the early 1950s, for example, an inhumation burial apparently associated with an iron spearhead was discovered on the sandhills less than 100m from the White House. The spearhead, subsequently donated to the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland, was thought to date to the Viking period, raising the potential that material of a similar date may be present nearby. The Sites and Monuments Record also notes that a chapel and burial ground dedicated to St Kenneth of Kilchainie may have existed in the vicinity, though the precise location is not known. In 1972 several sherds of a course gritty pottery were found in an eroded sand dune located on the edge of the grass grown dunes on the edge of Grishipoll Bay, and a number of shells and hammer stones were found above the bay in 1903. Further sherds of possible beaker pottery were found around Grishipol c.1980, all of which serves to indicate the presence of occupation in the area over a considerable period of time.