Hitting the ground running…
Our second day on site this season brought us mixed weather but mainly very sunny and bright conditions, especially after lunchtime, so good progress was made all across site.
Inside the broch
In the broch, we got going in the west, south-east, south, north, and north-east rooms, so really hitting the ground running! After Rick and Amanda got their heads back into where they left off last year, and an initial clean-up of the broch, then some actual excavation ensued.
In the south-east room, we have a lovely feature on the edge of the bowl-shaped hearth-pit, one which was stone-lined, and reused saddle querns set on their edges. One of our UHI students, Thore, started to produce a lovely new plan drawing of the feature in advance of us freeing up these tools and excavating them tomorrow, meanwhile in the next-door south room, Quin and Matthew have been excavating and sampling.
In the west room Rick, Travis, Jem, and Jemima resumed the process of excavating on the grid. In the southern part of this room, they began the process of lifting a substantial slab floor, which we recorded last year and guess what? They began coming down onto and even more substantial set of flagstones! Â
Work also resumed in the north room and, here, Graham began the process of excavating the occupation deposits on the grid sampling pattern we have established. Thore was also in this room for a while today and began to reveal what appears to be heat-affected slab fragments in an area that lies directly beneath where we discovered a higher hearth last season, so we wait with bated breath to see if this is, indeed, and earlier one.
In the north-east room, samples and environmental guru, Associate Professor Scott Timpany, returned to the scene of all his hard work last year and is investigating the peaty deposits from the room. He’s optimistic for getting this part of the broch interior completed soon, at which point some of the attention here will move onto the large chamber set in the adjacent broch wall.
Beyond the broch
Outside the broch, Holly’s team have been largely working on the Structure O area and Craig and Alex worked next to the foot of the broch wall itself, while Declan investigated the wall top of Structure O.
Meanwhile Kathryn has begun a solitary (only to begin with) exploration of Structure T. We’re really just in the destruction levels of this building and Kathryn was revealing deposits or dumps of dense clay and charcoal spreads that relate to the final moments and infilling of the building.
In the Structure B2 zone, Iain and his team got seriously into the grid excavation of the floor/occupation deposits, recovering animal bones and some pottery. The soil samples that they are taking appear to be rich in organics, so they’ll hopefully be able to give us some really nice environmental information on this wag type building.
Finally, over in “the cells” zone of the site, Ole and Claire began to take down an irksome baulk!
A baulk is usually a very useful thing. It’s typically a linear-shaped stretch of soils that we leave in place so that we can maintain a vertical section and “read” the stratigraphic succession of key areas of the site, while, at the same time, digging in plan either side of the baulk – a sort of best of both worlds.
The trouble with this baulk, however, is it has outstayed its welcome. It did its job for a considerable time, giving us information about the south-east area of the site, but now it is literally blocking our view of the relationship between Structure U1 and Structure J, and we need to see exactly how these two buildings relate to each other. There is even a strong possibility that these two building fragments are part of one large village building. We will hopefully find out the truth very soon.
Martin Carruthers
Site director, The Cairns
