Another fruitful day on site
After the baking sunshine of yesterday, today’s cloud cover has given respite to the now slightly crispier site team!
Under the watchful eye of the wagtails nesting behind the niche wall in Structure T, and Hazel – the new, exceedingly well-behaved site dog – the new volunteers and field-school students, who arrived yesterday, have settled well into their assigned areas and work is continuing at a blazing pace.
In Structure O, the removal of rubble and the revealing of walls is moving at a rapid pace, despite the smaller team this week. This is primarily thanks to Kev’s tireless efforts at removing huge blocks of masonry and masses of shillet. This rubble seems to be the debris that resulted from the purposeful dismantling of the broch, which tumbled into the buildings surrounding the entrance.
It makes for hard digging and lot of stone breaking, as the blocks are frequently far too heavy and large to manoeuvre out of the trench – even with a team of lifters. So, Kev’s constant energy and efforts are completely invaluable in both progressing the work and making my supervision ability look effective!
The walls in this structure are proving persistently surprising and once again The Cairns is teaching us all that having preconceptions of what a feature, or building, will do is generally unwise as they will nearly always do something wildly unexpected.
However, due to the eastern wall now sneaking under the trench edge, and away under the spoil heap, we are hoping the further removal of the rubble will tell us the likely purpose of this large, strange building. There is a high chance that it would have blocked any impressive approach, or view, from the broch entrance, which other sites, like the broch of Gurness, tell us is an important feature of these structures.
Aptly supervised by Ross, the team revealing the broch wall in the “overburden” zone are making great progress.
The broch here becomes more and more impressive with each passing hour. Through episodes of hard mattocking and trowelling, the rubble is being removed revealing areas of charcoal, animal bones, shell caches and stone tools as the diggers push their way into the rubble deposits filling the north side of Structure T to quite a height.
Despite the daunting amounts of rubble to remove, spirits in this area have been high, and cheerful, since the beginning of the season. That’s even accepting that Ross persistently promises, at some point, to go mad with power.
This promise, however, has only materialised in the form of quality teaching for the students and volunteers under his care.
Up in Structure B2, Logan and his enthusiastic squad have been finding amazing quantities of pottery, which they been carefully lifting and recording. They have also uncovered a partially articulated animal spinal column.
The presence of articulated animal remains is always exciting as the potential of secure radiocarbon dating material is incredibly important. While writing this, a cheer erupted from this area as even more animal bone emerged, marking Iris’ first archaeological find!
Elsewhere in this area, when asked about his progress in the area, recent graduate Quin stated that “my misc wall remains a misc wall”, a fact which, rather than demoralising him, appears to be motivating him further to find out how it slots into the general workings of Structure B2.
In “the cells” of Structure U, as well as giving tours to eager site visitors, Ole is making steady progress in revealing the curving walls in this area, while also deftly excavating huge quantities of animal bones – of which Deryk, Anthea and Joe have already retrieved over two finds tray’s worth.
The team up here are beginning to experience the same irritation as we are down in Structure O, where the walls insist on disappearing under the trench edge, hindering any attempt we may make to follow their extent for now.
Diving into the activities in the south-east room of the broch, Amanda has been joined by UHI undergraduate student Emily on her first excavation, where she has adapted beautifully to the careful techniques required to excavate the large hearth.
There has been an interesting discussion in this area surrounding the structure of this hearth as Amanda has been revealing what appears to be “fixtures and fittings” associated with the feature – such as a potential flue. By all accounts, this is rare in the broch and it also appears to be a far more formally set hearth than many of the others excavated on site.
In a swirl of samples and sample numbers, Rick and Alannah have steadily gridded out several areas for careful excavation and catching up on the detailed paperwork required to record the complex deposits surrounding the entrance to the well.
In the central room, Jan has been excavating a stone-setting with great care and fully revealed the particularly lovely pot base that was first uncovered by Jean last week. This example has been called one of the nicest pottery examples found on site.
The call of the still-roofed, west intramural cell has now been answered by Martin, who has begun carefully cleaning and sampling the dome of undisturbed material sitting in the entrance.
The cells of the broch at The Cairns have thus far all proved to be interesting and rich in archaeological weirdness(!), such as one being coated in thick red clay, and another being lined with yellow clay that had limpet shells pressed into it.
The likelihood of some good information being recovered from this one is high, especially given that it is the only one with the roof still intact, protecting the deposits within.
From the first few trowel scrapes Martin has already recovered a strange iron object, the use, or purpose, of which is currently unclear.
This has proved to be a cheerful and fruitful beginning to the second half of the 2024 season, which is hopefully a glimpse of things to come over the rest of the final fortnight.
Holly Young
UHI PhD candidate
