More red deer remains in the broch’s west room
Today we made fantastic progress on site and there were also fantastic finds on a bright very sunny day!
In the broch, Scott, SJ, and Amy continued their rapid progress in the north-east room. They’ve been working through the ash and charcoal occupation deposits here. They’ve actually reached the base of the floor deposits in their sample grid and begun to expose the natural clay beneath.
This is the original surface that the broch builders founded the structure on and it’s very good news for us in terms of reaching our goals here.
In the south-east room, Amanda and Karen have been continuing to tease out the complicated order of events that occurred around the hearth. In the process they’ve identified yet another hearth in the sequence. Additionally, they’ve exposed an adjacent stone-setting of little upright stones that could be an ash-box or other feature associated with the management of the hearth back in the Iron Age.
In the west room, Rick has begun to excavate the central hearth deposit revealing yet more vivid ash and the edges of its stone-setting, which we suspect will become ever clearer. This is the earliest hearth yet reached and may well be the earliest one in the west room.
Jem has been working nearby, near to the slab partitions that divide the west room from the rest of the broch, and has been finding a remarkable animal bone deposit.
In particular, she exposed what looks like the complete foot of a red deer, with all its bones (phalanges) intact – present in little rows, laid out in situ in its articulated position just as the day it was deposited!
One of the things we need to remember here, is that in earlier excavation seasons the west room was absolutely full of red deer bones, so it seems it’s really maintaining the trend.
In the north room, Thore has been excavating occupation deposits, in the process revealing an earlier layer of fine paving. He’s also found a very nice, decorated pottery sherd associated with this paving.
It has a chunky impressed ring-boss motif and is so similar to a sherd found in the north room last season that it could very well be from the same broken vessel. In fact, this type of pottery decoration is so relatively rare in the Northern Isles during the Iron Age (and so much more common in the Western Isles) it’s even more likely from the same pot, and possibly an import from the west.
Meanwhile, outside the broch, there have been superb animal bone finds too. In the “frontage” area, just outside the south-east portion of the broch wall, Lou and Joanne have discovered a fully articulated spinal column of a large mammal, along with lots of other associated bones. We don’t yet know what species it is because vertebrae can be hard to diagnose, so we’ll keep you posted…
In the “overburden” area, Ross, Claire, Meghan, Django, and Kathryn, (with occasional assistance from Kev) on the northern exterior of the broch, have been working through the rubble and exposing the walls of the village buildings. It seems that the fuller extent of Structure T is probably coming through here.
Animal bone from the rubble and shattered stone flakes here have also been remarkably well preserved, but a tiny find made by Kathryn shows just how good the preservation levels are in this loose, voidy stone – a tiny metal ring of copper alloy.
It’s a remarkable find on her part because, as the above images attest, it is very dinky. That Kathryn was able to spot this tiny find while robustly working in the heavy rubble and shattered stone context of the deposits against the broch wall is special testament to her eagle-eyed recognition skills.
This is the kind of minuscule artefact we normally recover from the screening that occurs when we sieve our soil samples, so kudos to Kathryn for this!
Over in Structure B2, on the west side of the trench, finds have also been remarkable.
Jan made a nice, final discovery (she leaves us after today). As Jan and Beth exposed more of the wall core of the building a lovely stone tool turned up, set in the wall. It is double-cupped cobble – a cup carved/pecked on either face of a cobble.
Lots of wear around its edges seem to indicate it has seen use as a bit of a grinder too. It may be a loom weight that was started but never completed – the pecked cups representing either ends of an unfinished hour-glass perforation.
But equally it may have served as an anvil tool and the work zones are just very symmetrical. We’ll think on. Either way, it was a lovely end to Jan’s time with us on site, this year.
In the later Iron Age structure U4, Graham and Judy continued to excavate the lower rubble from the cell structure and came down on to the uppermost occupation deposit – lovely ash and charcoal-rich soils resulting from the human occupation of the building. Near the curving wall face itself they found some very nice, substantial chunks of vivid red coloured Late Iron Age pottery, including delicate rims.
Finally, we cannot finish this week two blog without a massive thanks to the outgoing portion of the team who leave us now!
Next week will see a “changing of the guard” as new UHI field school students join us.
Martin Carruthers
The Cairns site director
