Death and Display in the North Atlantic: The Bronze and Iron Age Human Remains from Cnip, Lewis, Outer Hebrides

Abstract

Abstract This paper revisits the series of disarticulated human remains discovered during the 1980s excavations of the Cnip wheelhouse complex in Lewis. Four fragments of human bone, including two worked cranial fragments, were originally dated to the 1st centuries BC/AD based on stratigraphic association. Osteoarchaeological reanalysis and AMS dating now provide a broader cultural context for these remains and indicate that at least one adult cranium was brought to the site more than a thousand years after the death of the individual to whom it had belonged.