The finds keep coming…
Today was another day of great finds.
Early in the morning, James, Sarah, and Gillian were working on the paved surface of Structure K, removing last vestiges of smaller stones and soil patches from the top of the slab surface, when Gillian upturned one of the smaller stones and it turned out to be a carved lamp! It’s a bit of a season for lamps as two others have turned up this year, so far.
Meanwhile, inside the broch, Rick was excavating and sampling the lowest silty deposit in the north room and revealing the scalped natural clay here when he found a perforated bone mount, complete with the little bone pegs that sit in the perforations.
These mounts are some sort of edge-binding, perhaps on boxes/containers or they may have been used to secure some of the wooden furniture inside the broch. Either way it’s another lovely find.
Nearby, also in the north room, Thore was also excavating the lowest occupation layer when he encountered a lovely pottery spread. The sherds include nicely decorated rims with applied cordon that has little slashed indents. It’s a type of Iron Age pottery known as neck-band ware and we’ve found a relatively large volume of this particular type of pottery from the north room especially.
Finally, one of the most noteworthy finds of the day was made by Kev, who let himself out of the finds tent for a while today to do some digging in Structure O, the big courtyard space outside the broch.
There is a corner of the walled area that is not paved and we wanted to see if this presents a window into even earlier layers and deposits here. Sure enough, it wasn’t long at all until we could see the line of a wall emerging that predates Structure O, the paved courtyard.
Kev and the two bone needles her found lying next to each other. (📷 Martin Carruthers)
Near the edge of Kev’s excavated section, he found a pair of perforated bone needles lying next to each other just as the day they were placed there.
A notably finds-rich day then, and some splendid findings made of a contextual nature too, which we can tell you more about tomorrow…
Martin Carruthers
Site director
