The UHI Archaeology Institute team arrived back at Skaill, Rousay, last week with some days of glorious sunshine to start the season off well. The team includes a UHI student field school and Rousay residents for the three-week excavation. Here project co-director Dan Lee provides an update:
The trenches were uncovered by lunchtime on Monday and the site cleaned.
Excavations this season will be focusing on the complex of buildings on the eastern side of the settlement mound alongside and below side the standing domestic range. Last season, the full extent of the buildings was exposed and the earliest phase was revealed – a large square building with 1m thick walls which everything else respects.
The middens, which abut the external wall to the east, suggest the building is at least 13-14th century in date.
The upper abandonment levels inside were exposed and provided the starting point this season. What was the intriguing building used for and did it have an internal floor? Later stone walls and an additional entrance had been built but how did the building change through time?
Other dates suggest that the extensions to the south were early and may have been domestic, given the central hearth and internal furniture. The hearthstone was lifted to reveal a smaller, more ad hoc, hearth below, which used a former wall much reduced in height, as a platform.
The focus for this season’s excavation is to investigate the internal floors.
The aim is to take environmental samples from these to understanding the range of activities, what fuels were burnt and how this changed through time. If earth floors survive, we aim to sample these on a grid to understand them spatially.
A stony silt abandonment layer was excavated inside the square building, revealing a flagstone floor, but one that doesn’t appear to have occupation material, rather deposits that have accumulated as the building fell out of use before being infilled, most likely in the late 18th or early 19th century.
The main trench was extended to the south to explore the area outside the building range and excavate a section down the wall face. To the north, paving was removed to explore some of the earliest deposits that abut the outside of the square building.
This yielded medieval pottery and animal bone which can be used for dating. Our hunch is that the square building could be as early as 12th century in date, but we will see.
A new trench was opened up in the field to the south to investigate this side of the settlement mound, Trench 34, containing the footings of a boundary wall.
Trench 20 to the east of the main building range was reopened (last excavated in 2021) to explore the massive 1m wide wall that might be another large square building. Excavation last time did not find an internal floor due to the considerable depth of infill.
The corner of the building was found just outside the original trench – always the way – and further extension aims to map out the plan of the structure.
One of the most significant finds has been a finely moulded, red sandstone fragment from an ornate column capital found in the passage to the west of the range, with comparisons to those at St Magnus Cathedral, further hinting at the presence of a nearby high-status chapel associated with the Skaill hall and The Wirk hall-tower.
