The Cairns dig diary - day ten - Archaeology Orkney

Digging for Britain: Professor Alice Roberts with Martin Carruthers and Professor Ingrid Mainland. — *Digging for Britain*: Professor Alice Roberts with Martin Carruthers and Professor Ingrid Mainland.

Digging for Britain film crew on site

We had a special guest on site today, Professor Alice Roberts and a film crew for the BBC TV series Digging for Britain. But in between the excitement of being filmed we still got lots of work done. So here’s an update.

Structure O and the broch frontage

Holly and Kate working in Structure O. (📷 Neil Barker)

Kevin, Jaron, and Kate continued moving the rubble and soil to expose the western boundaries of Structure O. Finds have included a large amount of animal bones, stone tools, and pottery. Meanwhile, Holly has established the fuller extent of the eastern wall of Structure O.

The overburden

Ross, Joanne, and Alan continued to expose more of the north-eastern broch wall, recovering a lot of large animal bone and caches of shells within the deposits.

Structure B2

The prize find in Structure B2 was a hand-sized piece of whalebone.

Work continued cleaning a cache of large animal bones, identified as coming from cattle, deer, and pig – including a pig jaw with dentition.

Quin was able to lift a remarkable pottery base that was still sitting on the floor of a new cell/chamber identified within the building.

The cells

More of the walls were exposed today as the outline of the cells continued to be defined.

Zooarchaeologist Professor Ingrid Mainland, from the UHI Archaeology Institute, was on site today and confirmed that among the animal remains encountered were bones from large cattle and horses.

The broch

The decorated pottery sherd with its large 3D applied roundel after it had been lifted. (📷 Martin Carruthers)

Amanda and Alfie continued excavation of the hearth in the south-east room and seem to have confirmed the existence of an earlier hearth, complete with stone setting/surround. Kate undertook further excavation of the probable flue that fed the hearth.

The small room, or 'North Bay', of the north room. (📷 Martin Carruthers)

Two sides of an early stone-setting emerge during the excavation of the main hearth in the south-eastern room. (📷 Martin Carruthers)

Meanwhile, Jean continued excavating the ash deposits in the central room, while Jan and Chris worked in the north room and uncovered more pottery and animal bone. The major find was a large piece of decorated pottery, which appeared to have been deposited with a cobblestone tool.

A large stone close by may be a threshold stone for the entrance into the small room beyond – “the North Bay”.

Jan Hicks