Scottish Seaside Explored For Clues On Scotland's History

THE towering columns of rock dotted around Scotland's coastline have long fascinated climbers and historians, due to their inaccessibility.

Now a team of archaeologists is using climbing equipment to scale the sea stacks around Lewis and Shetland, some of the hardest to reach areas in Scotland.

The Severe Terrain Archaeological Campaign (Stac) began as a pilot project in June 2003.

Since then Chris Barrowman and his team have discovered remains dating back to the neolithic period, as well as buildings from the Iron Age, Bronze Age and early Christian hermitages.

They include forts, outlaws' hide-outs, and even prisons.

"We knew it was possible to get to these sites," Dr Barrowman said.

"We have looked at pretty well all the stacks around Lewis now and we will be doing some more work on the sites where we have found remains of buildings, concentrating on those that are suffering most from erosion.

"This is not just about recording stuff before it falls into the sea, we also want to research why people would want to live on such inaccessible sites," he said.

"It would have been a very hard life."

One sea stack on which they hope to do more work is Chaisteal a Mhorair.

First surveyed in 2003, it is one of nine looked at by Stac over the past two years.

"It was this little pinnacle of rock with a building set right on the top," said Ian McHardy, an archaeologist.

"We believe it was used as a little prison. It is so small - just five feet by five feet - that no-one would have wanted to live there voluntarily.

"These sites were quite often used to imprison people.

"There is a stack in Shetland which also had a prison on it, and the story is that a father once locked his daughter there to preserve her chastity, which is why it is called the Maiden Stack."