Remarkable find kicks off 2025 season
The UHI Archaeology Institute team arrived back at Skaill, Rousay, last week with some days of glorious sunshine to start the season off well. The 2025 dig team includes a UHI student field school and Rousay residents for the three-week excavation.
On Monday the team had the trenches uncovered by lunchtime and cleaned the site. It’s remarkable how well the buildings are kept below the plastic sheeting and the site was soon ready to start excavating.
Work this season will again be focusing on the complex of buildings on the eastern side of the settlement mound, alongside, and below, the standing domestic range.
Last season, a new large rectangular building with an external staircase was discovered and we have now opened a trench across it. The internal floor of the large square building was exposed. Both buildings are thought to be contemporary with each other and dates for the square building suggest it is at least 13th to 14th century in date.
This year, the main trench (19) has been extended to the south-east to investigate a quarter of the large rectangular building, the plan being to expose the internal floor. The interior had been backfilled rapidly with loose rubble which was soon excavated. This contained a butchered cattle skull and the remains of internal wall plaster. Progress here was fast so watch this space next week for an update!
Excavation of the floor surfaces inside the domestic house, formed by a series of extensions between the rectangular and square buildings, continued. Last season an earth floor was removed to the south of the central hearth and ash deposits around an earlier corner hearth to the south were removed revealing earlier phases of the hearth slab. This part of the building range had seen successive layers of floor slabs and earthen floor patches, which will be investigated this season.
To the north, a small trench extension aims to explore a potential structure north of the square building. Later structures were soon exposed just below the topsoil, which would have been contemporary with the standing buildings and formed part of latest phase of activity at the farm.
Trench 20 sits across the north-eastern corner of the rectangular building and was re-opened again, and extended, to explore the area outside the structure. The aim is to recover material suitable for radiocarbon dating abutting the base and below the wall to help date the building.
One of the most significant finds from the rubble infill inside the rectangular building was a sandstone block with bas relief text “…TO M…”. (pictured top)
Initially the team wondered who “Tom” was, but then realised the fragment was more likely to have been part of “MEMENTO MORI” – Latin for “Remember death” – and came from a grave in the nearby St Mary’s Kirk graveyard. We have had lots of finely moulded, red sandstone from Skaill, including a column capital, thought also to originate from the kirk.
This idea of the movement of material from the kirk to the farmstead is strengthened by the latest tombstone fragment.
Excavations at Skaill is co-directed by Dan Lee, Professor Ingrid Mainland, Dr Jen Harland and Dr Sarah Jane Gibbon.
For more information visit the project page. The site open day is on Sat 19th July. Watch here for updates!
Dan Lee
