An influx of visitors ahead of tomorrow’s open day
Just a very quick update today as we were so busy on site today, and had so many visitors, we’ve hardly had time to pause to collect thoughts about the day’s progress. But progress there has been.
In the broch, we’re dealing with some of the very earliest hearth fills in the west room and sampling these like crazy to get them completed. There are lots of beautiful little lenses of ash and charcoal to peel off and sample.
In the south-east room, James managed to get to the bottom of the large pit that had contained so many querns and stone tools. We hope that samples from here will inform us a little about the possible uses of this pit, but one possibility is that it is a foundation pit dug entirely to place items into that had significance at the very instigation of the broch.
Regular readers of this dig diary will know that querns and some other stone tools seem to have been more than just tools during the Iron Age and had other significance too, so it’s really not a stretch to consider that productive tools from an earlier time that had brought success and plenty to earlier households might have been exactly the kinds of ‘heirlooms’ singled out for placement under the floor of the broch at its foundation.
Outside the broch, in Structure T, one of the village buildings, contemporary with the broch, the volume of animal bone including articulated pieces continues. It is coming from the central drain that runs along the length of the building. There are lots of red deer amongst the mass of bones.
The articulated nature of much of the bone shows that sections of ‘fresh’ carcass still partially retaining muscle, ligament, or sinew, were being dumped, or deposited, into this drain and apparently at a point in time when most of the capstones of the drain had been prised up.
The drain seems to terminate in a very large, still very wet, pit or sump, partially lined with drystone walling.
This drain terminal being actually located within the building seems odd given that if the builders of Structure T drain had extended it just a little further they could have made it connect with the main central drain that issued out from the broch.
Thus, they’d have taken the drain water all the way out, clear of Structure T altogether.
Its details like this that may suggest little chronological details and difference between otherwise apparently contemporary features across the site. Perhaps, then the drain in T was not absolutely made at the same time as the central drain system.
Whatever the truth of the matter, the lovely muddy, wet fill of this drain and sump should give very detailed environmental information during subsequent analysis of the samples.
Over in Structure U1 (the building with the amazing stone furniture; cupboards and niches) Matt and Daniel have recorded and lifted the uppermost slab floor and are beginning to set up the grid strings that will allow them to sample the soil floors and occupation layers, and get the most detail out of the excavation of this building.
Meanwhile in Structure U4, the later Iron Age building amongst ‘the cells’, Bev and Szuzsanna are already at this ‘gridding’ stage, excavating the soft clay and charcoal occupation layers on their sample grid. They’re finding masses of organics and charcoal, including very large pieces of roundwood branches. Looks like there will be lots of very good environmental information from this post-broch period building.
Well, that’s a very brief update- and plenty more to come…
Martin Carruthers
Site director
Tomorrow is our main open day for this digging season (Friday, July 10 – 10am-4pm), and we anticipate lots of visitors on what will be our final ever open day of the project as this year we bring 20 years of excavation at The Cairns to a conclusion.
We’ll bring you lots more updates in the excavation diary until we finish work on July 17. If you can visit us tomorrow during the open day, we very much look forward to seeing you there!
