Iron artefact and a deposited shell…
Another great day on site at The Cairns and, despite the cool start and brief spell of light rain around midday, the afternoon brought the return of some much-needed sun, with exciting finds to boot.
Starting off in the north room of the broch, Scott continued to reveal the original flagstone floor, making very impressive progress. In the adjacent north room, Thore was continuing in the careful sampling of the charcoal-rich deposit surrounding the hearth base there.
The west room was full of activity, with Rick, Travis, Jem and Neil all making excellent progress. Here, sampling continued at the west side of the hearth for sedimentary DNA analysis, along with some more scraps of copper alloy shavings making exciting appearances! Travis continued exposing the paving on the south side of the room, with some stone tool finds filling out this productive day.
Emma and Ceiridwen were continuing work in the south room, making no less of a buzz as they uncovered lots of animal bones, stone tools, and pot sherds to keep the finds coming in for Kev, who was tirelessly processing small finds, and making use of the warm weather to dry-out the multitude of treasures the site has yielded over recent days.
Finally, Amanda continued with her efforts in excavating peat ash sweepings from the central hearth in the south-east room. Additionally, she uncovered yet more copper alloy scraps to add to the brilliant collection found within the broch walls.
Leaving the broch’s inner-rooms and passages behind and emerging from the front entrance to join the frontage team, we find Holly continuing geochemical sampling of souterrain deposits, making sure to extract as much information as possible before the process of dismantling the souterrain begins.
Carrying on with his exceptional finds, Craig has been clearing remaining rubble from between the souterrain and the broch wall, on the east side of the broch entrance. Further pot fragments were revealed, though perhaps the highlight was an extremely exciting four-inch strip of iron that he found lodged in the souterrain wall.
After extracting the last of the periwinkle shell cache, Dan began taking down more rubble between Structure P and the broch to reveal a clay context, finding animal bones and yet more periwinkles along the way.
Now working above Dan, Isaac was making rapid progress lowering the section outside the east broch wall around the souterrain entrance, hopefully revealing lots of information about the structure. Alongside this amazing progress, Isaac also found a very impressive common whelk, a rarer find around The Cairns!
We find Dani and Nathan uncovering more of the recently uncovered drain around Structure O, with Nathan finding further animal bones and potential stone tools for his efforts. Dani was uncovering a brilliant new clay deposit north of the drain system, finding lots of charcoal along with a fantastic stone tool.
Just north of these two, Cath was removing charcoal around the north face of the structure with lots of small finds including red deer bones. Of these bones, she uncovered some which showed butchery, perhaps implying some of that activity occurred around this area of site.
Circling back to Isaac’s work area, nearby Martin was enjoying digging at the souterrain entrance and keenly anticipating what this work may reveal.
Last, but certainly not least with the frontage team, in Structure U, Ole, Ron, Deborah, and Sedat uncovered a beautiful three-decker cupboard (and another large common whelk actually placed in one of the cupboards back in the Iron Age!), adjacent to the recently uncovered roofed cell. Despite the massive chunks of rubble, this group are having no trouble making astounding progress equally impressive discoveries.
Dan Elms
Volunteer
