THE COLONIZATION OF THE HEBRIDEAN-ISLANDS OF WESTERN SCOTLAND - EVIDENCE FROM THE PALYNOLOGICAL AND ARCHAEOLOGICAL RECORDS

The earliest known settlement in Scotland is Kinloch, on the Inner Heb ridean island of Rhum where deposits date to c. 8500 BP. This presents an anomaly for northern Europe, for in other regions, such as Scandin avia, settlement at a similar latitude is known from a much earlier da te. While Mesolithic settlement is likely to have been established acr oss the whole of Scotland by the eighth millennium, attempts to locate earlier settlement are most profitably directed towards the Hebridean Islands due to factors of topography, raw material availability and m odern land use. We describe two types of data from the Isle of Islay w hich suggest that people may have arrived in the Hebrides prior to 900 0 BP: possible evidence for disturbance to vegetation at c. 10,000 BP and the discovery of a tanged point, of a type found in Ahrensburgian assemblages from northern Europe, which date between 11,000-10,000 BP.