The excavation at Swandro on Rousay has attracted a great deal of a media attention over the last few days and we thought it may be a good time to add some background to the site and the ongoing archaeological work.
As part of an archaeological investigation (by the University of a Bradford and the University of the Highlands and Islands Archaeology Institute) of an eroding mound on the island of Rousay, Orkney archaeological work has revealed an extensive settlement.
This intriguing settlement under the beach was discovered by Dr Julie Bond in 2010, who spotted a few odd stones only just visible among the pebbles below the eroding mound. Since then, excavation is completely changing our understanding of this enigmatic site.
The tops of stones partly buried by the boulder beach turned out to be set uprights forming part of a prehistoric building around the high tide mark. Although the tops of the stones are worn and battered by the sea, the beach has partly protected the deposits and animal bone and pottery were recovered, the finds suggesting an Iron Age context.
Initial clearance of the overlying beach material revealed a building; an Iron Age Roundhouse (Structure 1). Only the landward circumference survived and contained a stone built oven and a cell with a large single flag cut to size forming the floor. Two stone cut holes indicated post settings suggesting the support for an upper level possibly a loft around the circumference for storage in the roof space.
Dr Julie Bond ( University of Bradford) remarked that “The seaward side has been savaged by the sea which has removed half or more of the structure.This has resulted in an Iron Age sequence having been terraced by the sea into a series of levels or steps. You can walk up these terraced steps through time, rising from truncated material dating to the Middle Iron Age up to Late Iron Age and Norse features forming the upper erosion terrace adjacent to the wave-cut cliff.”
Work this year has concentrated on the excavation of the infill of several buildings. The apsidal northwestern end of the first building found (Structure1), defined by upright stones settings and the internal dividing up right stones, revealed the presence of a flag floor and a stone oven set into the wall. Under the flag floor and the remains of burnt clay, forming an earlier hearth, had been eaten away by the sea.
The Iron Age sequence has been terraced into levels, rising from truncated material appearing to date to the Middle Iron Age up to Late Iron Age and Norse period deposits at the upper erosion terrace adjacent to the wave-cut cliff. To the north-west the sea is eating into the side of what appears to be a Neolithic Chambered Cairn. It is this cairn which forms the mound of Swandro. This suggests that the burial chamber may still be intact. Work on the passage has indicated a much later infill dating to the Late Pictish and Viking period over the collapse, with the presence of several sheep with cut marks on the bone which had been made by a heavy iron blade and a coin of the Northumbrian King EANRED dating to the mid 9th Century AD.
Dr Stephen Dockrill (University of Bradford) explained “The work is investigating the archaeological remains in order to sample the floors of the eroding Early and Late Iron Age structures to unlock the buried evidence.”
Steve said “Some of these buildings such as a small round building, Structure 2 (where the 4th Century coin came from) have walling surviving to nearly a metre in height. However on the seaward side the waves have taken much of the wall completely away.” He continued “The sea will destroy these buildings in the next year or so and this is our only chance to understand the generations who lived on this site”.
One building, a Pictish structure, has evidence for metalworking both iron smithing and the casting of copper alloy objects. This was indicated by crucible fragments and a small part of a mould. The Picts were the indigenous Late Iron Age people of Eastern Scotland and the Northern Isles, whose unique language and culture seem to have been obliterated by social and political changes of the ninth century, in which the Vikings played a major part.
For more information on the Swandro-Orkney Coastal Trust see their website
The Project is directed by Dr Steve Dockrill and Dr Julie Bond, University of Bradford, and is funded by Orkney Islands Council, Rousay, Egilsay & Wyre Development Trust, Orkney Archaeological Society, the University of Bradford, Orkney College, Hunter College, (City University of New York), William Paterson University.
Thanks are due to the landowners Russell & Kathryn Marwick. The project is a joint initiative between the University of Bradford and the University of the Highlands and Islands Archaeology Institute supported by the Swandro-Orkney Coastal Archaeology Trust (www.swandro.co.uk)
The more time we spent in this trench the more that was borne out. We have long inferred that the preparation for building the broch involved cutting a large terrace into the hillside that it sits on. The logic for this hypothesis was that: in several places that we have reached the outer foot of the broch wall it is level to within a few centimetres, and this is despite the fact that it sits on a hill-slope or gradient of 1 in 20 (in other words the hill descends around 2 metres in height over the span of the 22 metre diameter broch). Obviously this would have made for an extremely sloping broch and interior without some modification.
Meanwhile, in the southwest extension the same terrace cut discussed above, also contained the walling of a building that may well turn out to be part of the broch village. Indeed, this may reveal very telling information about the nature of the relationship between the broch and village. There is a debate in Scottish Iron Age studies about how contemporary the villages that surround brochs are with the construction of the brochs themselves. Some scholars favour the idea that villages developed around broch towers gradually, and were subsequent to the building of brochs, but others consider the villages to have been part of the plan from the outset, especially in Orkney and Caithness, perhaps, where the village buildings tend to have a very integrated, and planned appearance. The presence of a village building in the construction terrace of the broch may well tell us that the plans for the broch included village buildings from the outset. This will be a very significant piece of evidence in the debate, and it arises from the fairly unique way in which the broch builders chose to build and to deal with the topography, sculpting the hill slope in the first place.
A very odd feature of the souterrain seen in a previous season was the quern installation set up on the roof of the souterrain at its southern end. Essentially, two rotary querns had been set up inverted over an intentional aperture in the souterrain lintels. The central holes of the querns were aligned with the aperture, and the entire feature conveys the impression of being used to pour something into the underground passageway from above. There are several instances of Iron Age querns reused in this way to form a porous lid on pits in wheelhouses in the Western Isles, and in one instance it was suggested that there may have been libations being poured into them! Now that we have been able to excavate and acquire soil samples these will be subjected to phosphate analysis, amongst other analyses, to try to discern what trace there might be of any substance that was being poured into the hole in the roof.
Whilst the excavation at The Cairns has been up and running, myself and Gordon Higgs (a student from Sheffield University) have both been undertaking professional Placements with the project to undertake geophysical survey in the fields surrounding The Cairns.
The results of the survey show that the landscape has been heavily ploughed in the recent past and has disturbed archaeology in places. Nevertheless, the ditch surrounding The Cairns has shown up in both types of survey. Indeed, the anomaly on the survey results showed that it appears to be a double ditch feature. These substantial ditches are passed through by a linear feature, which is a couple of metres wide and runs from the broch sown slope towards the coast. This feature appears to be an ancient ‘hollow way’, or sunken track, and could also be partly related to a lintelled passageway referred to by the antiquary the Rev. Alexander Goodfelow over a hundred years ago.
My name is Rik Hammond and I’m a visual artist based in St Margaret’s Hope – just up the road from The Cairns, here in South Ronaldsay.
