News
In November 2025, archaeologist Steve Birch delivered a talk on the Mesolithic shell middens at Tarradale within a national and international perspective.
"Between Land and Sea: Exploring the Evidence for Mesolithic Activity at Tarradale, Muir of Ord" focuses on the excavations carried out at site '2B' in 2017 and 2023 which produced a nationally significant range of antler artefacts, along with contemporary features, some of which may relate to temporary structures. It explores the potential to be revealed through post-excavation analysis of the recovered materials, including the questions we would like to answer.
A Possible Kiln at the Barns. Some hardy souls continued excavating into the depths of the winter at the Tarradale "Barns" site. In Trench 8 we have a significant feature about 4 metres across with a set of steps leading down into it, a circular wall, flat stones at the base and much evidence of in-situ burning. The confusing bit is that it does not appear to match any of the buildings on our 1788 estate map, meaning it could conceivably pre-date it.
Excavation of the feature has now largely finished, but analysis of soil samples is ongoing.
See the YouTube video of a recent talk on this intriguing feature.
Tarradale Excavations 2025: The "Barns". In May 2024 we opened a trench over the possible site of a distillery shown on the 1788 estate map, SW of Tarradale House. Unfortunately we didn't manage to locate the distillery, but we did find an extensive wall in a different trench which we have been investigating since. We continued excavations on the site for a number of months hoping to find evidence of a number of barns depicted the 1788 estate map. Further info and pics can be seen in the Blog Post. In late 2024 we also undercovered a probable corn drying kiln on the site.
Excavations at The Barns continued in June and July 2025 but have now concluded. In October 2025, the team will make an initial excavation of a 19th Century ice house at Tarradale, which is shown on the OS 2nd edition map.
Mesolithic Finds Sorting Completed
After two winters we have sorted over 350 bags of shell midden material from our 2023 Mesolithic dig at Tarradale, we estimate that equates to about 4 tonnes. We extracted bone, antler, fish bones, charcoal, worked lithics, pierced shells and more. Eric would to thank all the volunteers who sorted for an estimated 1500 hours in total!
Read the blog post here.
Mesolithic Cowrie Shell Beads. Sharp eyed Carol found this lovely but tiny cowrie shell bead while finds sorting from our Mesolithic shell midden dig at Tarradale in December 2024. It is similar to the one we found before but smaller and the holes are neater. Amazing to think someone was probably wearing this over 6000 years ago!
Pictures of very similar cowrie beads from Mesolithic sites in England can be seen in this article.
Shell Sorting Sundays. On Sunday mornings we have been sorting through sieved shells from the Tarradale shell midden to extract pieces of bone, antler, fishbone, small artefacts et cetera. Several interesting finds have been made already. The shell sorting is done in the comfortable surroundings of the library at Tarradale House. Shell sorting from our 2023 dig has now been completed.
Tarradale Through Time may be officially finished, but we continue on a smaller scale as the Tarradale Archaeological Team (TAT)! Excavation took place in late Sept/ early Oct 2023 where we reopened a trench on the shell midden site that was first excavated in 2017 but not completed. Important antler artefacts dating from c 4000 BCE were found in 2017 and the excavation explored these contexts further. See the photo gallery here and read the new blog post.
See also Eric Grant's Blog Post containing the radiocarbon dating results from the Mesolithic Shell Midden sites excavated in 2017. It also includes photos of the rare antler tools. The story has been featured in The Scotsman, BBC Online and in the national press.
Launch of our Publication. The Tarradale Through Time book is now available for 9.99 inc. UK p&p. Buy it now using Paypal from the Tarradale Through Time: Community Archaeology on the Black Isle page.
End of Project Celebration The conclusion of the Tarradale Through Time project was celebrated on Sat 24th September 2022 with an exhibition of finds, poster displays and a lecture by Eric Grant. We had over a hundred visitors during the day. Check out our magnificent cake!
The latest resistivity survey results from the site an excavation carried out by Barri Jones in the early 90s at Tarradale reveal the presence of what may have been a complex multi-vallate fort. The resitivity data, collated by Bob Jones, and various aerial photos have been combined to reveal details of this fort of probale early Iron Age date. Its connection to the Pictish Barrow cemetery remains unknown but could still have been in use at the same time. See more on Barri Jones' excavation here.
Data Structure Reports for our 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2023 excavation seasons can now be found on the Project Areas page. See also the report for our Abandoned Settlement project. A video from the 2019 Pictish Barrow Cemetery excavations can be seen to the right.