[5] Students and academics have for several years investigated archaeological sites on the Ardnamurchan peninsula and have previously made a number of discoveries, including an Iron Age fort[6] and a Neolithic chambered cairn.
[1][9] Other grave goods consisted of an axe, a knife, a bronze ring-pin from Ireland, items of pottery, a whetstone from Norway, a drinking horn, a sickle, and a set of tongs and a ladle, which each contained traces of organic materials.
This, combined with the raw materials used in the grave goods and ship structure narrowed down the areas of origin to eastern Ireland, north-eastern mainland Scotland, Norway, and Sweden.
[13] According to Dr. Hannah Cobb, a co-director of the project from the University of Manchester, the boat burial is "one of the most important Norse graves ever excavated in Britain.
Although other boat burials have been found, most famously that at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk, they had either been deposited centuries earlier or had not been successfully excavated due to deficiencies in archaeological methods.
Dr. Cobb has commented: "We don't think the association with the older monuments can be a coincidence – this was a place which was very important to people over an extraordinarily long period of time.
There are previously known Viking ship burials on Scottish islands at Carn nan Bharraich and Lochan Kill Mhor and one other site on Oronsay, two more on Colonsay and one on North Uist in the Hebrides, at Scar on Sanday in Orkney, one on Fetlar, and another at Ling Ness on Mainland Shetland.
[4][16] Port an Eilean Mhòir is about 45 kilometres (28 mi) southeast of Loch na h-Airde in Skye, where evidence of a Norse-era maritime centre has been found, although it is not known if it was in existence as early as the 10th century.
[17] Dr Oliver Harris of the University of Leicester, one of the ATP co-directors who worked on the site, believes that the occupant of the burial was "someone of high status, who was wealthy and powerful and very interested in being seen as a warrior.