Dig diary – week three at Skaill, Rousay

That’s the end of another season at Skaill, Rousay, after the third and final week. This focused on excavating the internal floors and lifting a large knocking stone. Project co-director Dan Lee provides a summary.  

We got a lot done in our short three-week season and we now understand the sequence of buildings in the main trench.

One of our key questions for the project was to establish whether we have continuous occupation at Skaill, from the Norse hall in the 11^th to 12^th century AD, right through to the clearances in the mid 19^th century, and final abandonment of the farmstead in the late 19^th century.

The answer is yes, as we can now demonstrate that the buildings show a complex sequence of construction, use, dismantling, reuse and construction that was continuous for nearly 1,000 years. 

We will never be able to excavate all of the settlement mound, and have been characterising its full extent since 2015 using sample test pits and geophysical survey; eventually honing in the on the range of buildings we have in the main trench and the Norse hall to the west.

We are not going to demolish the standing buildings and have had to work around these to position our trenches and safely explore the accessible structures below. We are now confident that we can tell enough of the late medieval and early modern story at Skaill from the structures we have exposed.  

In its early phases Skaill was high status, with the Norse hall that we partly exposed in 2019, expanding in the late Norse and Medieval period to include the large farm to the east, The Wirk hall-tower (that we investigated in 2021) and medieval chapel below St Mary’s Kirk (with its very fine moulded red sandstone features).

Skaill expanded again in the 17^th and 18^th centuries with a new house (excavated in Trench 19), before infilling and eventually being completely remodelled and modernised in the late 18^th to early 19^th century.  

In Trench 19, excavations in the square building exposed an extensive flagstone floor that supported the internal walls, all contemporary with the later phases of use that may have been contemporary with the house to the south.

A central drain channel in the floor suggests it may have been used as a byre, with earlier phases of flag floor visible below. Further excavation must wait until next year!  

As we realised last week, the square building is likely to have been contemporary with a large rectangular building to the east, perhaps built as early as the 12^th or 13^th century. These buildings have clearly undergone modifications and changes in use over time, ending centuries of use with infilling and levelling when the farm was modernised in the early 19^th century and the standing house and kiln-barn were built.  

The central room was extended to the south, perhaps in the 18^th century, to create a house. The floor was raised and a new central hearth was added. The hearth was recorded and removed revealing earlier phases of flag floor further down.

At this time, residents of the house used the square building to the north as a store and added a new door to the east. The southern room was the main part of the house, and a series of flag floors were excavated. In the southern part of the space, an earlier hearth setting was revealed located on a large stone slab. This might have been replaced by the central hearth during modifications.

An earth floor was present in the rest of the space. This was excavated using a 0.5m grid to recover bulk and spot samples to explore how different zones of the space were used.  

Finds this year included pottery, animal bone, fish bone, architectural fragments of moulded red sandstone (perhaps from the medieval kirk), a coin, glass beads, spindle whorls, whetstones and a fragment of a bone comb. 

An exciting find was discovered below the floor near the central hearth. A small hole opened up in the floor during cleaning, revealing a bowl-shaped object buried in the levelling layer below the earth floor.

At first, we thought it might be an upturned pot, perhaps used as a hiding place. Once the capping was removed it was soon realised that it was in fact made of stone and the hole was the base of a large broken knocking stone, placed upside down.

Once the floor had been excavated, we could expose and lift the stone. Sadly, the occupants hadn’t thought to use it as a hiding place (opportunity missed!), and the deposit in the bowl consisted of silt that had infiltrated down, rather than something more exciting!  

We’d like to thank the landowners for hosting us again, and the students and volunteers who worked so hard to make the season at Skaill such a success! We now start the long process of washing and cataloguing the finds. Watch this space for an update from our sound artists in residence.  

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