Originally published by Front Street in 2000.

Over the past six years a team of archaeologists, historians and environmental scientists from the University of Sheffield explored the island of Barra.They have discovered and recorded many hundreds of previously unknown sites and monuments, excavated selected examples, and carried out extensive environmental sampling and laboratory based analysis of all this evidence. The first volume of reports focuses on the wild and rocky peninsula of Tangaval at the south-western corner of the island. In this seemingly inhospitable place, on the westernmost margin of Europe, perched on the very edge of the Atlantic Ocean, the team have discovered almost 250 sites and monuments. They range from the first rock-shelter and occupation huts of the earliest settlers around 4000 BC to the abandoned settlements from which Macneils sailed to new homes in America and Australasia in the mid-nineteenth century BC.