What we’ve found so far and what lies ahead
Well, we have just entered the second half of the excavation season at The Cairns, so I thought I’d reflect on some of the things that we have found out so far and, in looking ahead, lay down just a few markers for what we hope to achieve in the second half of the season.
In the broch
The excavation of the hearth in the south-east room has been very interesting, indeed.
The hearth has turned out to conceal far more complexity and a richer sequence than we thought likely. There appears to be a base slab and a nice set of edge set stones proving a setting/surround for the hearth.
This is the only hearth within the broch equipped with such a formal setting we’ve so far encountered as the others all comprise a simple base slab (usually heat affected and cracked by use).
This is an intriguing addition to the list of differences between the south-east room and the other spaces in the broch. Was this room special in some way? Hopefully, we’ll find out more over the next weeks.
The north room has also been yielding good stuff!
Pottery, scant from the zone in previous excavation seasons, has been prolific this season. Interestingly, the pottery found in the north room on Friday, by Jan, with its highly 3D raised roundel or dimpled boss decoration, is unusual in an Orcadian context.
To give a sense of its rarity, a similar decorative motif was found on just a single piece of pot from the fascinating excavations at the Howe broch, near Stromness, undertaken in the 1970s and early 80s. In fact, the motif is far more common in the Western Isles.
The excavation work in the central room has also yielded lots of pottery and I expect more finds from this particular area in the next few days. We also have to tackle the main question for the central room – is there an earlier hearth underlying the current layout of the interior? We should really get to grips with this question this week…
Structure O
This area has also been full of surprises.
Once Holly and her team dealt with the paved revetment and hearth that overlay Structure O, they were able to tackle the major rubble that lay within and over it. The sheer size and volume of the blocks of former masonry that make up this rubble, and the occasional clusters of this former masonry still exhibiting tip-lines, was a real eye-opener in terms of what it suggests about the scale of the broch immediately prior to its demolition.
The rubble lay a considerable distance out from the extant part of the broch, five metres out from the broch wall face, and therefore indicates just how high this stonework originated from when it fell or was pushed.
Another surprise in the Structure O area is the form of the building itself. It would seem, just from the work undertaken as recently as Friday, that the building appears to sit centrally in front of the entrance to the broch. This is instead of what we expected – that the extramural buildings would lie to one or other side of a putative line or avenue/passage leading through the village settlement.
This type of configuration of the settlement – where it actually straddles the centreline leading from the broch – has been seen in a small number of other broch excavations. Typically, these have been considered as secondary, later developments when they’ve been encountered before, but at The Cairns, we know from structural stratigraphy and radiocarbon dating, that our Structure O went out use at, or near to, the same time that the broch was decommissioned.
This makes Structure O even more intriguing because it may suggest that the other examples of centrally placed village buildings, which were excavated in the pre-radiocarbon age, may also have been built and occupied as early as the broch phases at their respective sites.
Importantly, it suggests that there was more than one type of village configuration during the broch period. That would add a very interesting complexity to the phenomenon of broch villages.
The ‘overburden’ zone
This area suffers a little from its slightly uninspiring label, but it’s actually a rather interesting zone near to the centre of the main trench.
Partly, our work here, led by Ross, has been about extending our view of the broch wall face but the purpose of our work here also involves examining a variety of features, including uprights (orthostats) and a hearth/furnace base, which have appeared isolated and unconnected to any particular building nearby.
This far, the excavations have served to contextualise these features a little better, showing that in at least one case one of the upright features is much deeper and substantial than it appeared and that it was set up at a similar level to other nearby features, lending it better cohesion with other features and nearby Structure N.
As work continues in the overburden we will now see much more of the broch wall emerge from rubble and backfill, giving to whole area a much more impressive appearance and a fuller impression of how the broch looked back in the Iron Age.
Structure B2
The sub-rectangular wag-like building B2 is one of a threesome of long buildings in the west area of the main trench. It was a surprise to find that it has not one curving cell built into one of the long axes of the structure but two.
Gaming counters and pottery have been the stand-out finds here, but also groups of animal bone, especially around the central hearth. We’re mostly dealing with the lower infill of the building but we’ll soon be in contact with the actual occupation/floors in B2 surrounding the central hearth.
‘The Cells’
Large volumes of animal bones have attended the excavation of this area.
Big cattle, horse and deer bones have been prolific in the cells and the volume, and depth, of deposits from has been impressive. Consequently, the walls are very well preserved as we remove the deep soils from here.
Among the animal bone there have been groups of bones and, even today, a pig skeleton, complete with parts of the skull, the maxillary and mandibular jaws and rows of teeth, has been uncovered on the edge of the cells zone.
The main takeaway from the cells, thus far, is that they are very clearly multi-phase in character with lots of modification and remodelling going on.
A rich story clearly awaits us as we excavate more in this area.
Martin Carruthers
Site director
