Back in the South-east room
Today’s blog concentrates on one particular area of the site: the South-east Room of the broch…
It’s been a long time since I was last at The Cairns and it’s good to be back in this amazing landscape. I’m a Project Officer with ORCA, based at the UHI Archaeology Institute, which generally involves being in the office – getting back out into the field reminds me why I chose to work in archaeology!
In past seasons I’ve worked on the later Iron Age buildings on site, mainly Structure C, but this year I’m in the Structure A broch itself. You really get a sense of the scale of the building when you’re in it!
Martin has tasked us with excavating the South-east Room of the building, which was last investigated in 2013.
We’ve spent a bit of time freshening up the beautifully colourful clay floor, which extends across the room and investigating various features. One of these is a large circular spread of heat-affected stone and reddish-black soil, which represents the remains of a hearth near the centre of the room. This may overlie an earlier hearth, as previously seen elsewhere in the broch (e.g.: the West Room).
Tomorrow, we plan to excavate a deposit of charcoal/ash-rich material next to the hearth, which may be rake-out deposits. When considering this deposit, it makes me think of members of the broch household tending and sweeping the hearth.
The tendency for inhabitants of early buildings to spend lots of time around hearths often leads to the erosion of surrounding earthen floors, so perhaps some of the rake-out has been deliberately left in place to fill up ruts that may have pitted the floor nearby the hearth.
Then, once we’ve defined the full extent of the hearth, we’ll half-section it and sample the soil, which ought to give us a picture of things that were cooked on the hearth through the analysis of any preserved barley grains and fragments of animal bone.
It’s really interesting to see just how different the occupation deposits are across the broch.
Excavating this room will hopefully add to our understandings of different activity areas across this monumental structure. That will have to wait for tomorrow, however, as for now, the late afternoon rain has stopped us from excavating further today…
Amanda Brend
Area supervisor
