Skaill farm excavation – week three update

As the trenches at Skaill farm, in Rousay, are closed for another year, project co-director Dan Lee reflects on another successful season.

It’s a short, but busy, three-week season and this year has been no exception – we now have a better understanding of the early farmstead and the sequence of the buildings, along with recovering a range of artefacts.  

One of our big questions at Skaill has been whether the Norse Hall, last uncovered in 2019, was replaced by the later farmstead to the east.

The later phases of occupation at the hall date to the 11^th to early 12^th century AD but is there continuous occupation at the site extending into the late medieval post medieval period? Other radiocarbon dates from middens around the farm would suggest so, returning dates from the 13^th to 16^th century.

How these dated middens related to the buildings was a key question for this season, and the extension of Trench 22 to meet the buildings in Trench 19 held the answers.  

In the northern end of Trench 19, remains of the early 19^th century corn-drying kiln were recorded and removed, revealing more of the large building it was built into. Extension of the trench to the east to meet Trench 22 revealed a large nearly square building with very finely built stone walls as wide as 1m on the north and south sides.

Measuring 6.70m by 5.75m externally with walls surviving at 1m in height the northern building is the earliest in the trench, with everything else respecting and abutting it. The rubble infill was removed to expose the upper abandonment horizon inside, and some rough internal walls. There is a large blocked doorway to the south and a narrower one to the east.  

An extension of Trench 22 with our dated sequence of midden to the west met the outer wall face of the northern building and has allowed us to examine the sequence of deposits and surfaces that abut the building to the east.

This indicates that the building is much earlier than we had previously been able to demonstrate, and could have been built in the 13^th or 14^th century AD or even earlier. This has implications for the range of buildings to the south, where the square northern buildings was extended twice eventually into the house that we have now fully exposed.  

Three test pits were excavated to the north of Trench 22 to investigate any continuation of the middens.

These revealed a series of ashy dumps, likely from domestic hearths, above the subsoil. This sequence continued over 19m north of Trench 22, indicating that this area saw a prolonged phase of ash deposition, perhaps relating to the early buildings.  

Further excavation is required on the internal floors of the southern house, which has a central hearth, but it could be quite early.

The remarkable thing about this range of buildings, is that the earliest phases could date back to the medieval period and that they remained in use, after numerous modifications, until they were backfilled and levelled in the late 18^th / early 19^th century when the farm was “modernised” and the domestic house and kiln-barn was built which survive at the site today.

Certainly the range of imported pottery at Skaill come from all across Europe during the 16^th to 18^th centuries, identified during the LIFTE project, demonstrating that this rural island farmstead in Rousay was linked to these wider European trade and consumption networks.  

What was the northern square building originally used for?

There is precedent for larger square buildings on farms in the post-medieval period, that functioned as granaries or barns. But if the Skaill square building is as early as is seems, it appears to have been built at a time when houses were changing from longhouses (like the hall at Skaill in Trench 19), to Norwegian stofa-type buildings (timber-framed houses).

The northern building at Skaill is similar to the Late Norse stone-built house at Skaill, in Deerness, which also has a small kiln-type building outside. It’s too soon to confirm the original use of the northern square building at Skaill and excavations next season will continue inside to investigate the internal floors.