NORTH UIST, SCOTLAND—Recent storms have exposed a woven reed basket containing worked quartz and animal bones on an island in the Outer Hebrides. “It’s rare to find well-preserved organic material. It indicates that this basket must have been kept under water from the day that it was placed, or lost, there. Perhaps it was in a freshwater loch until it was covered over by encroaching beach sediment,” Kate MacDonald of Uist Archaeology told the Island News and Advertiser. Specialists will remove the basket, which might date to the Bronze Age and was discovered by a member of a local archaeology group, in a block of sediment so that it can be excavated under laboratory conditions. The quartz and bones will also be examined. To read about another recent discovery in Scotland, see "Viking Hoard Unearthed."
