Back in the broch…
Hello everyone! A very warm welcome back to our regular blog for The Cairns excavation project.
It’s wonderful to be back on site to share our findings from the Iron Age site during summer 2025 with you! We also very much encourage visitors to come and witness the site and the excavations for themselves if they’re able to do so…
Today our work on site was largely about removing the covers from across the big trench and getting to know the new members of a team that includes staff, students, and new volunteers.
Amanda, one of our supervisors, took the team through the health and safety measures on site and then we got cracking on shifting the plastic and tyres. By the end of the day, we’d removed all the covers in the trench, except the protective sheets in the broch floor itself, and we had tidily positioned all the tyres (which we use to weigh down the plastic in-between seasons) around the excavation area.
This is the prefect moment to give you the low-down on what we’ll be attempting to achieve on site this season:
This year we’ll be spending a lot of time in the broch, not surprisingly, as it forms something of a centrepiece to the excavations. We’ll be endeavouring to excavate and sample as many of the floors within the various partitioned zones, or rooms, of its interior as possible.
In particular, however, we will return to the West and the SE Rooms. Both these rooms had a long-term history of sequences of hearths and very rich floors/occupation deposits. Each of these spaces seems to have served as the busy hub of two suites of rooms, a West-North suite and a South suite that were strongly physically demarcated from each other.
In the West Room
As we return to the West Room of the broch, we will be hoping it lives up to its previous track record as one of the richest and most informative areas of the entire broch interior. The deposits have been rich in animal bone, environmental material, and some remarkable finds. Beautiful glass beads and metal jewellery items are some of the more memorable artefacts to have come from the West Room.
Personally, I suspect that the earliest hearth that we have currently (partly) exposed in the centre of the West Room will turn out to be the most formal and substantial of the sequence of hearths excavated here. We’re hoping therefore for nice features that show us in more detail exactly how this hearth was used and it would be equally nice if there were lots of artefacts to help with this…
The second major area that we’ll be pressing on with is the Southeast Room. We had left off excavations last year with the discovery of a more formal hearth with a stone-setting surrounding a nice square base slab. There were even suggestions of a flue cut through the clay floor of the room leading into the base of the hearth.
We will be attempting to discover if this was the earliest hearth of all in the room or if yet another lies beneath. Talking of the clay floor, here, we’ll also begin excavating this in earnest and gridding it out for sampling, so we can assess the location and distribution of activities.
Structure K: Peering into its earlier life?
Another area we will explore afresh this year is Structure K.
We’ve previously established that this sub-rectangular building, located in the north of the main trench, was constructed over the infilled remains of the earlier enclosure ditch that once surrounded the broch-period village.
When we last intensively excavated in this structure, the excavators here discovered over 60 fired clay mould fragments. These had been used to make a range of bronze jewellery items, ring-headed pins, penannular ring-brooches, and simple rings. These were accompanied by iron-working residues and tools, as well as an iron-working furnace.
Accompanying these materials was a substantial animal bone midden of thousands of bone fragments from cattle, pig, sheep, and red deer. It seems a substantial feast was held to mark the inception of these socially important pieces of jewellery and iron items.
What we would like very much to learn next about Structure K is whether evidence for an earlier occupation in the building survives beneath the apparently late floor we have reached. Alternatively, if no earlier floor and occupation survives then we should be able to begin to discern the upper fills of the enclosure ditch beneath the base of the building.
Either scenario (or something else altogether we’ve not thought of) suits us just fine, with lots to learn about the Iron Age village.
Structure O
Since we already know from our radiocarbon dates that Structure O went out of use at the same time as the broch, we had expected the building to be organised around the type of village layout seen at numerous other northern broch sites.
Essentially, a long central passageway leading up through the village houses to the main door of the broch would communicate with the doors of the village buildings either side. This kind of layout is seen very clearly at the Broch of Gurness and was evident at the excavations at Howe, near Stromness, amongst many others.
At The Cairns last year, however, it became clear that our Structure O wasn’t conforming at all. In fact, it emerged that it was a very substantial structure straddling the front of the broch and appears to block the way into the main door of the broch.
This unusual arrangement has parallels.
Sites like Burroughston in Shapinsay, Netlater in Harray, and, beyond Orkney, Yarrows broch in Caithness, all had some form of building or enclosure positioned directly outside the front door in such a way. Our work in Structure O this year will therefore try to establish exactly how it related to the broch and the rest of the contemporary village buildings.
Structure B2
Continuing from last year, when we resumed excavation in this sub-rectangular building (for the first time in several seasons), Structure B2 is what we refer to as a wag, or at least a wag-like building. It post-dates the broch and appears to have been used between around AD300 and AD600.
Our work in this building will reveal more of the floor deposits and the central hearth of the building, which was at least partly contemporary with the metalworking and feasting over in Structure K.
Concluding thoughts
Overall, then, the key areas of attention this season represent a continuous zone of investigation running across our main trench from west to east.
We’ll undertake smaller scale explorations of a few other areas and features as we go. In the main, however, we’ll concentrate our intensive focus on the broch and the heart of the site and key areas outside it.
We’ll keep you posted on how we get on….
Martin Carruthers
Site director, The Cairns
