Dail Mòr (or Dalmore) is a hamlet situated in the Northside of

Carloway Carloway ( gd, Càrlabhagh, IPA: �kʰaːɾɫ̪ə.ɤː is a crofting township and a district on the west coast of the Isle of Lewis, in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland. The district has a population of around 500. Carloway township is within the pari ...

, a major settlement on the

Isle of Lewis The Isle of Lewis ( gd, Eilean Leòdhais) or simply Lewis ( gd, Leòdhas, ) is the northern part of Lewis and Harris, the largest island of the Western Isles or Outer Hebrides archipelago in Scotland. The two parts are frequently referred to as ...

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the ...

. The hamlet has a beach and a cemetery. A small well kept car park is available for visitors as are picnic & public BBQ facilities. The beach is a known surf destination mentioned in numerous guidebooks. Note there is a strong

rip current A rip current, often simply called a rip (or misleadingly a ''rip tide''), is a specific kind of water current that can occur near beaches with breaking waves. A rip is a strong, localized, and narrow current of water which moves directly away ...

at the north end of the beach. Despite its remoteness, five of the six houses in the village were connected to

fibre broadband Fiber to the ''x'' (FTTX; also spelled "fibre") or fiber in the loop is a generic term for any broadband network architecture using optical fiber to provide all or part of the local loop used for last mile telecommunications. As fiber optic ...

in November 2012. In August 2016, the ''Transocean Winner'' oil rig ran aground, on a headland just off Dalmore beach. The oil rig was being towed from Norway to Malta, when it became detached from the tug boat.

Archaeology

Excavations were conducted at Dail Mòr in the autumn of 1982 by Gerald and Margaret Ponting when part of the sea wall collapsed near the beach. This was further excavated by Sharples and Curtis.

Prehistoric Prehistory, also known as pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the use of the first stone tools by hominins 3.3 million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems. The use of ...

stone structures were found and documented, suggested to be a dwelling, along with various artefacts left in place by

Beaker culture The Bell Beaker culture, also known as the Bell Beaker complex or Bell Beaker phenomenon, is an archaeological culture named after the Inverted bell, inverted-bell beaker (archaeology), beaker drinking vessel used at the very beginning of the E ...

with some earlier finds from the

neolithic The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several parts ...

. These included tools made of

bone A bone is a Stiffness, rigid Organ (biology), organ that constitutes part of the skeleton in most vertebrate animals. Bones protect the various other organs of the body, produce red blood cell, red and white blood cells, store minerals, provid ...

antler Antlers are extensions of an animal's skull found in members of the Cervidae (deer) family. Antlers are a single structure composed of bone, cartilage, fibrous tissue, skin, nerves, and blood vessels. They are generally found only on male ...

and

pottery Pottery is the process and the products of forming vessels and other objects with clay and other ceramic materials, which are fired at high temperatures to give them a hard and durable form. Major types include earthenware, stoneware and por ...

. A large number of

flint Flint, occasionally flintstone, is a sedimentary cryptocrystalline form of the mineral quartz, categorized as the variety of chert that occurs in chalk or marly limestone. Flint was widely used historically to make stone tools and start fir ...

s and

arrowhead An arrowhead or point is the usually sharpened and hardened tip of an arrow, which contributes a majority of the projectile mass and is responsible for impacting and penetrating a target, as well as to fulfill some special purposes such as sign ...

s found during excavations and on the beach nearby suggest the area may have been used for a workshop of their manufacture. One noted artefact recovered was the Dalmore bone; a square-sectioned 34mm with perforation. Zig-zag markings just over 5mm apart on the bone were analysed by P.J. Scott and Margaret Ponting. Later analysis of the stone tools found that majority of the arrowheads were of quartz type not found locally. The nearest known source is in

Shieldaig Shieldaig ( gd, Sìldeag; on, síld- vík, lit= herring bay)W. J. Watson''Place-names of Ross and Cromarty'' 1904, p. 208. is a village in Wester Ross in the Northwest Highlands and is in the Scottish council area of Highland. Geography ...

Wester Ross Wester Ross () is an area of the Northwest Highlands of Scotland in the council area of Highland. The area is loosely defined, and has never been used as a formal administrative region in its own right, but is generally regarded as lying to the ...

, at least 100 km away, in a direct line. This has led the archaeologists to surmise that there was a trade network between the Western Isles and the mainland for some quartz materials - there are local quartz materials on Lewis but they are not as fined grained.

Images

File:Dail Mor near Carloway in summer 2012 (1).JPG, Dail Mor File:Dail Mor near Carloway in summer 2012 (2).JPG, Dail Mor File:Creag an Dail Mor from Carn Eag Dubh - geograph.org.uk - 1277254.jpg, Creag an Dail Mor from Carn Eag Dubh

References

External links

Scotland's Places, Lewis, Dalmore
Hamlets in Scotland Archaeological sites in the Outer Hebrides {{WesternIsles-geo-stub