Stone lamp or food vessel?
As we began excavation today, it was with some trepidation, given the forecast was for rain most of the morning. However, that rain held off until much later in the afternoon and we enjoyed some of the sunniest and warmest weather we’ve thus far been blessed with this season.
Work progressed very well and in the broch excavation carried on apace, with the team working on the sensitive but highly important floors across most areas of its interior.
Graham plugged away at the central oven/kiln feature, which has turned out to be a bit more elaborate than previously thought and better preserved.
Nearby, Thore was working on the floors near the well of the north room and has revealed the top of some of the packing stones that must have been involved in the construction of the well.
These would have been packed around the top of the corbelled underground chamber providing the necessary weight to pin the “beehive” shaped chamber into place as well as levelling-up the surface above the well-chamber to make it flush with the earliest broch floor.
This is brilliant news because, when fully revealed, it will provide insights into the construction process and the sequence of building the well and probably also the broch.
We should, for example be able to see the extent of the great hole of a pit that was dug during the construction of the well. From this, we may even obtain a date for the well’s construction and maybe even for the broch itself.
In the west room, Karolyn worked on the main hearth mound, and Jem on the adjacent stone-lined “ash box”. It turns out to be lined on all four sides, which was something we couldn’t appreciated previously, so it has some formality in its construction.
Elsewhere in the broch, Amanda’s team working in the south-east room have revealed more of a large stone-filled feature in the floor. We don’t know yet whether this is a backfilled pit (not unlike the huge one in the west room), or a backfilled stone-lined tank, or even a major drain… but we will soon find out.
One of the fascinating things about the feature is the large number of querns and stone tools that were used to back-fill it.
You know something is significant when Iron Age people chose to place such items in the makeup of a feature because though they may seem apparently ordinary everyday objects to us, querns are frequently deposited at important moments such as the foundation of buildings and indeed decommissioning them. We’ll keep you posted on what this feature turns out to be.
Quin has been busy resuming excavation in the south room after he finished planning and recording the space and he’s reached a new occupation/floor deposit here so we’re descending down and moving back in time through the successive floors. He’s also been finding tiny scraps and specks of green copper alloy.
Craig and his stone “lamp”. (📷 Holly Young)
On the outside of the broch near the front of the building, in Structure O, Craig began the day with a very nice find indeed, a beautiful sub-triangular stone “lamp”. It lay upside down on the paving of this courtyard space and it’s covered in lots of dark residues that will help us to understand if it really was a lamp or a food vessel as some of these sorts of objects have turned out to be from other broch sites in more recent re-analyses.
In village building Structure T, Declan, Iris, Ann, and Steve, continue to make their way through the demolition deposits in the building, finding animal bone, shells, and more rubble. We will hopefully soon reach the upper occupation deposits.
To the south of the broch exterior, in “the cells” area, Ole and crew have been really busy excavating the baulk that divides this part of the site from another zone (Structure J area) and today they managed to prove that the wall of Structure J does indeed join up with parts of the cells, particularly Structure U1.
This means we are dealing with one very large village building here, which the later, cellular chambers U3 and U4 have truncated. So, the sequence of events here is really coming into focus.
Finds from Structure B2. Click for details.
Finally, if we rotate right round to the western side of the broch-mound, over to Structure B2, our sub-rectangular, Wag-like structure, Iain and the gang here have also been very busy revealing the fuller extent and details of the central hearth. Emma recovered a lovely little stone pot lid next to the hearth and Pip has been working on a large scapula that looks like it may turn out to be worked.
Here’s hoping for a similarly productive day tomorrow, despite whatever weather forecasts say, and we’ll continue to bring you updates of our findings.
Martin Carruthers
Site director
