A day of cleaning, preparation and recording
The day started out cool, damp, and windy, making it feel exceptionally like a Monday, but we continued with our excavations despite the chill and were eventually rewarded with sunshine as the day closed out.
Beginning outside the broch, to the north, Kathryn and Declan continue to clear the overburden rubble from the frontage where they discovered a jawbone (probably red deer), while Steve begins to reveal the edge of the shell midden here, which we know dates to around AD200.
To the eastern side of the dig, Joanne has begun excavating deposits to reveal the drain underlying Structure O, while Craig reveals the paving stones elsewhere in the main portion of the structure.
Directly outside the broch entrance, where the remnants of the souterrain have been removed, Holly may have found the lowest stones of the broch wall, while Kev continues to uncover the other end of the drain that continues on into Structure O.
Outside Structure U1, Alex has been cleaning back rubble to identify whether the wall behind was built contemporaneously with the broch, and, inside, Ole continues to clear the rubble filling the structure.
Alex identified a portion of slab as having been broken off the tip of one of the main upright slab partitions and he’s shown in one of the images holding it in place so it could be recorded.
John has been diligently excavating the deposits filling adjacent Structure U2. Meanwhile, Paul discovered a beautiful piece of carved stone while clearing a portion of the remaining bulk outside of the broch that may prove to cut through Structure J.
Over by the Wags area, Iain’s team is preparing to half-section the hearth that they’ve been excavating in B2. Today they excavated several stone tools, a piece of a pecked stone, and pottery sherds that they had uncovered last week. More of the antler lying adjacent to the hearth, has also been revealed.
Moving into the broch, Quin, in the south room, spent the day drawing a plan of the context revealed during last week’s excavation and assigning numbers to the newly revealed stone slabs there.
In the south-east room, Amanda and Karen continued to work through the complex layers of the large hearth and ash box feature while I continued to remove the layers overlying the clay floor banking against the broch wall. Angus has begun sectioning and removing stones from the strange feature bordered with quernstones and appearing to overly a void of some kind, possibly a drain set in the floor.
Moving to the west room, Kaz and Jem continue grid sampling of hearth deposits in preparation for lifting the hearthstone while Travis samples a brown deposit containing bone and pottery pieces at the south end of the room. Martin is also grid-sampling at the edge of “the pit” in front of the cell in the broch wall.
In the north room, Thore is sampling hearth deposits after lifting the paving stones, while Scott, in the north-east room, is excavating around a quern fragment and trying to reach the underlying natural layer of earth in the northern area of the room, where he found a few fragments of pottery.
In the broch’s central area Graham has begun to section a little enclosed feature suspected to be a kiln or an oven. In the broch’s entrance passage, Iris cleaned the surface to ready it for excavation.
Day six was largely a day of cleaning, preparing, and documenting in the broch, but the week holds a lot of promise for the exciting features we have begun to work on. We are all looking forward to digging deeper come tomorrow!
Elspeth Palmer
MSc Archaeological Practice student
