The Cairns Days 14 & 15 – 2019

The weather conditions at The Cairns this week have been appalling, so Site Director Martin Carruthers has combined Day 14 & 15 into one blog post….

Well what can we say- this blog incorporates two days of work on site as we’ve been rather truncated and interrupted by recent weather conditions.  Firstly, high winds, and then persistent rain have had an impact on our ability to sustain fully productive excavation across both days.

Nevertheless, some very interesting insights and results have been forthcoming from the site. In the broch the work has continued to reveal more details of the early occupation. Therese and team have observed a very densely rich crushed shell deposit around what we think are the primary floor surfaces.  This is especially the case in a zone tucked between the western wall face and the edge of the substantial floor slabs. This shell material may be the earliest deposit that we have reached so far in the broch, perhaps even dating to the construction of the massive building, or part of a foundation deposit of some significance.  It shows that even once we have dealt with the ‘primary’ floor slabs in the area (which will be next season) we still have very interesting things in store to find out about the early moments of the broch’s life!

Elsewhere in the broch Yesterday, work recommenced in the Southern quadrant/room.  This began with a gentle clean over the area to remind ourselves of where we left off in the previous season.  Well so much for that simple recognition exercise! Within minutes Mika, one of our Leiden University interns had discovered another little copper alloy (bronze) object.  A roughly ring-shaped object.  This time this piece appears slightly D-shaped and may be some sort of fitting, or even a contorted pin fragment rather than a ring like the one found earlier in the season within the Western room.

Outside the broch in the Southwest extension, Rick’s team have also been “coming up with the goods”.  You may recall that this area encompasses a part of the village settlement, and a portion of the inner ditch that formed the enclosure that once surrounded the site.  Rick’s team have been busy re-writing what we thought was going on here.  On the one hand they have established that quite a lot of what we thought of as the natural glacial till is in fact redeposited, slumped over, or actively employed as a building material by Iron Age builders.  The result is that the village building, Structure J, which had the appearance of a rather compact, and neatly defined kidney- shaped building has expanded exponentially to form a rather massive, much more complex, multi-roomed building.  The net result is that the broch-period village on this SW side, which had appeared confined to small belt of features hugging the broch outer wall face is now much larger and impressive! 

A little ‘treat’ for us in this area came when Jenny, one of our UHI excavation module students, was working on the rubble in-fill behind Structure J. This is an area probably related to the foundation of Structure J.  A cache of animal bone and other items seem to have been deposited in the upper part of the rubble. There was an inverted sheep skull, several femurs, some worked deer antler, and a very nice rubber stone for a saddle quern.  This is one more instance of apparently special deposits made at the site relating to the foundation or decommissioning of major buildings and features during the Iron Age.

In trench-areas M & Q on the Northern slopes of the site, Bobby’ team have been doing great work also on the village buildings here.  Almost everyday the substantial nature of the remains there seem to get larger, more massive, and more complex.  There are now myriad walls relating to rectangular, cellular and circular buildings.  Some of the walls are double faced and substantially built in a style that may make them contemporary with the broch, others are single-faced revetments that have been added over time.  It’s a complicated and not immediately clear area to resolve, but this complexity will, ultimately, result in a lovely detailed story of the development of the settlement.  For now, a clearer picture of the interconnected nature of the broch village is emerging with passages, thresholds and wall-piers serving to link some of the buildings and show how movement was achieved between and around this important part of the village complex.

Finally, and by no means least Holly has been busy, as ever, excavating and sampling the souterrain to the east of the broch.  This underground passageway has a series of in-fill deposits present but is now resolving on to floor surfaces and we hope to be able to recover deposits that relate to the early use of this enigmatic passageway to the past!

If you’d like to see some of these things for yourself we’ll be hosting an open day at the site on Monday the 8^th of July from 11am to 4pm!  Please do feel free to join us on site.