Among the visitors at The Cairns excavation this summer was Professor Alice Roberts, who was filming for the BBC TV series Digging for Britain.Â
The new series begins, on BBC2, on January 7, 2025, at 8pm. The Cairns dig features in the episode scheduled to be broadcast on Thursday, January 9, 2025. All six episodes will be available on iPlayer from January 7.
Work began at The Cairns in 2006, revealing a large Iron Age broch (c100BC-AD200) and structures dating from the Iron Age through to the Norse period.
Excavation of the broch has permitted unrivalled access to the superbly well-preserved, stratified occupation deposits inside, which are rich in artefacts and detailed environmental information relating to the life and use of the Iron Age household 2,000 years ago. This has provided both the monumental, architectural substance and more intimate and momentary details of human life during the many generations of inhabitation.
Surrounding the broch is an extensive settlement of village houses that sit within a ditched enclosure some 65-70 metres in diameter. Later in the building sequence, the settlement sprawled even more extensively over the infilled remains of the enclosure ditch.
