Martin Carruthers, Site Director at The Cairns excavation and lecturer at the University of the Highlands and Islands Archaeology Institute continues the exciting story of the dig as it enters week three……………
Today I thought I’d discuss what we hope to achieve in the next half of the project season.
We will carry on with the broch and the work of teasing out the soil floors in the building. It is after all one of the main elements of the site and certainly one of the important contributions that we hope that the project can make; helping us to understand the complex, changing use and lives of brochs. We hope to be able to reach some of the earlier floors within the building. Rick’s team have been doing great work here in arduously sampling the floors on various grid patterns to keep spatial control of all the findings and the environmental and geochemical samples. The hearth in the western area of the broch looks likely to be a lengthy series of hearths, one laid out on top of another!
This will provide a great sequence of radiocarbon dates and a strong sense of the longevity of certain feature areas, like this, within the broch. Additionally, we aim to finish the excavation of the wonderful well-chamber under the floor of the broch, and to be able to recover all of the incredible organics that survive there (I think I’m still reeling from the preservation of the wooden items there and especially the bowl!). Of course there is still some of the anaerobic deposit to come out of this space and there could be other remarkably preserved objects to come! We’ll keep you posted.
I spent a little time in the well chamber today and I could certainly detect at least one more quite large wooden piece to come. In addition, there are large quantities of plant materials in these silts that we’ll have to recover in sample tubs.
Work in the Southern extension will now concentrate on the deposits in the ditch fills, with just a little work to define village building Structure J. The ditch fills, I feel, still have a few surprises to yield. After all our sneak preview of this feature last year produced 4 bronze objects, lots of pottery and animal bones. Beyond the finds themselves the merit of this ditch exploration is to give a sense of the longer history of the site as the ditch is likely to be filled with deposits from across the phases of the site.
In Area Q/M, on the north side of the broch, we anticipate amplifying the good results already achieved in here in elucidating the village buildings. Bobby’s team were at it again today- uncovering new walls and adding to the litany of features and likely buildings in this area! We have the grandly imposing Structure O just outside the broch entrance and running northwards from this another wall related to Structure K or Q! It will be very interesting to see what sense we can make of the jumble of walls in this zone by the time we’re ready to pack up and go home in two weeks’ time, and the likelihood of nice artefacts coming from this area in the meantime is high!
From tomorrow we’ll resume our usual practice of sharing perspectives from the wider excavation team with you as they recount their experiences and their findings!
Martin Carruthers, Site Director.
The winding steps down into the well chamber are just brilliant! How beautiful and “well” constructed they are. Can’t wait to see what else you will find. Thanks for sharing your daily notes.