A productive day on site – shame about the weather!
The good bit really started today.
The digging groups are getting through the initial clean-up and into the swing of the archaeology, starting to sort out which walls go where as well as finding bone, pot and burnt material.
On the edge of Structure B2, after a day of tough digging, Logan’s lot have just about cleared the overburden that was probably caused by post-medieval rig and furrow agriculture. They are now clearing rubble tipped into the building around AD400 – according to the pig bones previously found nearby.
Their goal is to figure out where B2’s outer wall goes – at the moment it just disappears! The rubble in this layer is mixed with midden, so the diggers are finding chunks of animal bone, heat-affected stones, peat ash and charcoal.
In the broch’s north room, Chris and Jan are sampling a layer of the entire floor on a 50cm grid. The large bags (pictured above) are bulk samples that will be floated to catch all the tiny pieces of bone, stone, and plant evidence for life in the broch. The small bags are samples for geochemical analysis that may provide evidence of the activities carried out inside. The tags mark the locations of found artefacts.
Ross’s gang are tracing the putative line of the broch wall, working their way through overlying rubble and glad of the improving weather this afternoon.
To their east, in front of a large, heat-reddened stone – the base of a furnace, or a kiln, or oven – a post-hole was previously found. There was a brief panic about another potential post-hole this morning – post-holes are rare and require lots of context sheets – but it turned out to be just a smear of charcoal.
Catherine has been working on a 50cm section either side of the uprights next to the heat-affected stone to find out whether there’s a cut and fill (there probably isn’t), or packing and chocking stones (it looks like there is). She’s also found plenty of charcoal.
In her very own area on the south-east of the site, Holly has taken advantage of the temporary absence of underlings(!) to draw an elevation of the revetment wall in front of, and post-dating, the broch and photograph it for geo-referencing.
She’s now drawing a section of a hearth on a rough paved surface, dating to the 5th-6th century AD, that is sealing Structure O , so that tomorrow they can start dismantling the revetment and paving to see what’s underneath.
In the south corner of the trench, at the back of the broch, Ole’s in charge of the “convicts” lowering the level of rubble in the post-broch cells. Eventually they’ll be able to tell how these cells relate to the walls to the north and to the village contemporary with the broch. In the meantime, they’re finding bits of pot, bog-iron ore, burnt material and, as we spoke, part of a cow’s mandible with intact teeth.
It’s stopped raining (for now), the finds hut is up and running and we now have working toilets, so a productive day and many more to come.
Jean Rumball
UHI MLitt Archaeological Studies student
