A round-up of week one…
I thought I’d give a round up of progress and developments at the end of week one of the project – the first week of six weeks that we will be on site this year.
In the broch
Rick has been setting out the grid that we will use to excavate and sample the west, north, and central rooms of the interior. Thore and Graham have begun to excavate and sample the north room and have already been finding fine Iron Age pottery and a lovely little stone tool scraper known as a Skaill knife.
We will soon begin excavating the massive hearth mound in the west room and it’ll be fascinating to see what form it takes as we reveal more of its stone-setting.
In the south-east room, Amanda and Karen have been excavating early hearth deposits in that space and exposing likely stone-settings related to how the hearth was used.
Meanwhile, articulated animal bone discovered today in close association with the hearth deposits is very interesting both from a faunal point of view as well as representing invaluable potential for radiocarbon dating of this stage of the broch occupation.
Outside the broch front door
Outside the broch, near to its entrance, a wide belt of remains from a complicated assortment of different eras have been the subject of our work, led by area supervisor Holly.
This area is sometimes referred to as the “Frontage” zone as it surrounds the entrance to the broch and represents a lot of intense activity that includes major broch-period village buildings; substantial shell middens, human remains, a well-built souterrain, a massive shell-filled pit, later post-broch Iron Age houses, enigmatic areas of paving and kerb-walls, and Pictish middens to name just a few of the elements present.
It is as if the broch exerted massive influence during its life, and also for long afterwards, and that this front area, near its entrance, was a special focus for centuries of recurrent activity.
So far, in week one, nearest the broch itself, Holly has been preparing Structure F, the souterrain dating to the 5th/6th Century AD, for final recording, and setting up for the further exploration of Structure O, a major building immediately outside the front door of the broch.
As a by-product she’s also been revealing important details of Structure P, another Iron Age building that predates the souterrain and which the souterrain-builders cut through in process.
Until now, Structure P has been an isolated small circular cell of upright slabs giving little impression of its fuller character, but we can now see how it connects with other stretches of walling, and it begins to make more sense as a building rather than an isolated feature. Good news for our understanding of this likely broch-period village building.
Also in the frontage zone, Sarah and Leila have been excavating a last patch of late Iron Age, 7th Century AD, midden (context number: 808) that lies directly against the broch wall. As small as this vestige of the midden was in terms of its area coverage, it was nevertheless full of animal bone.
We previously excavated the vast majority of the rest of this midden several seasons ago and it had contained 5,500 fragments of animal bone, giving all sorts of insights into animal husbandry and food practices in the period. From just the small piece of midden excavated this week, bones included the obligatory sheep, and cattle, but also well-preserved horse long bones too.
The excavation of this last remnant of midden has also simultaneously revealed more of the beautifully constructed broch outer wall face.
The broch wall has been even more spectacularly revealed in one long continuous curving stretch from the east-facing broch entrance right around the north side of the broch (previously known as the “overburden area”) by Ross, Thore, Kathyrn, Craig, Django, Jan, Kev, Beth, Kev, and, guest excavator, Ben Saunders.
Usually a maritime archaeologist; Ben was with us for something of a one-day busman’s holiday as he’s on his way to Sanday to continue his fantastic community work on the historic wreck fragment that was discovered there in recent years. We wish him well going forward with that… and thank him for his sterling work on this side of the broch exterior.
Following all the team’s efforts this week, it’s looking fantastic, and the uninterrupted vista of the broch is highly evocative of what it must have been like to approach the outside the monumental building back in the Iron Age- a tremendous view, quite the experience!
A little touch of intimate human experience was also revealed as several little periwinkle shell caches were exposed clinging to the broch wall and also inserted into a gap in stonework of the wall itself.
These humble little caches of shell seem most likely to have been placed during the closure of the broch while its upper reaches were being dismantled, with the rubble being used to infill and to surround the broch remains.
Quite commonly, we encounter a range of items, including very modest sorts of objects, animal remains, and materials, deposited at crucial times in the life of buildings during the Iron Age so the shell caches could be quite minor, but semi-formal, deposits used to mark the ending of the broch (one of dozens of such deposits around the broch exterior and interior) or it could be an entirely spontaneous moment of discarding the remains of a “working lunch” as a small group of the builders paused during the build, fed themselves, and placed the remains of their quick repast in a convenient place before carrying on their arduous but important task. Or it might be a little bit of both those scenarios.
We’ve now reached massive rubble all around the foot of the broch on this north side, so we’ll be able to work on excavating it next week. Already within the upper part of this rubble we’ve been finding large, very well-preserved animal bones, some of them in a semi-articulated state showing they went directly into the rubble near the time of the end of the broch itself.
Again, these bones would therefore provide excellent radiocarbon dating potential, however, just as importantly, I think they also give us some insights into the procedures that were taken during the closure of the broch, and the strong likelihood that feasting was a key component of the attendant activities for the particular generation of Cairns villagers who ended the broch.
Meanwhile, the work of processing the many finds from the site has been led by Kev in the site office ably assisted by Ame and Judy. They’ve been cataloguing and photographing each artefact as it comes out of the ground to build up our visual database of the pottery, stone tools, bone tools and the rest.
Structure B: The Wag
Finally, in the sub-rectangular Wag-like Structure B2, where I’ve been guiding the progress of excavations myself, our team of: Eleanore, Sara S, Jan, Craig, Django, (these latter three when not helping at the “overburden” zone of the broch exterior) have defined the building walls, and distinguished later features from the main stage of activity here.
Pottery, stone tools, and a nice assortment of animal bone have been unearthed from the area so far, and having reached an earthen floor surrounding the main hearth, composed of sandy silt with lots of organics and peat ash from the hearth, we have now set out a grid across the northern room of the building in order to begin excavating and sampling.
We’re very lucky here to have any sort of “soft” earth floor, or occupation deposits, to excavate and understand because many post-broch period buildings in Orkney have floors that are largely solid slabbed and not much in the way of occupation evidence other than a few hearth fills. The implication of this situation is that during the Late Iron Age, (after the demise of the brochs), people maintained very well-swept house interiors and generally kept them scrupulously clean of any build up.
For us archaeologists then, the promise of an unusually organics-rich, domestic occupation is fantastic because we will hopefully be able to reflect on the different task zones of the building, as well as the types of food eaten and the local environment during the time that the building was occupied. Additionally, we mustn’t forget this is the building, which, last season, yielded small fragments of a beautiful late Roman drinking vessel of engraved glass, so you never know what else may be unearthed here…
Altogether, it’s been a fantastic first week on site with another five weeks still to go!
Join us for daily updates and images from the excavations…
Martin Carruthers
The Cairns site director
