As we continue to enjoy many visitors to the site during our last week of a 20-year long excavation, everyone is doing their best to coax out as many remaining secrets and stories as possible of the broch and the surrounding village buildings.
With success it seems, because Kev has seen over 120 bags of small finds coming in just today!
One of the exciting discoveries made by Holly last week, investigating the drain running alongside the broch, was a pit underneath the east wall. It is now fully excavated and sampled, including material for soil micromorphology taken by Jo and for DNA analysis extracted by Scott.
We hope that organic material from those samples will gift us with a date from just before the construction of the broch, which would be hugely exciting! Certainly, Martin has been incredulous and ecstatic about it.
Other than that, in front of the broch entrance the ‘grid squad’ (Craig, Ella, Indie, and Julia) have begun grid sampling in the newly christened Structure V – and yes, we appreciate the tip of the hat to the moderately famous Mr Jones we’ve got there. The drain in Structure T, our possible byre that contained heaps of animal bones, continues to be cleaned by Elspeth and Jo for photography and sampling.
Nico excavating the metalworking furnace in Structure K. (📷 Martin Carruthers)
Next door, so to speak, Nico is working away on the furnace finding even more slag.
Martin, aside from sharing encouraging words with us and doing all the things a site director does, has finished exposing and cleaning up the paving in the broch entrance. It has been dutifully recorded ready to be lifted as Martin explains with a glint in his eye.
Almost as though the broch is doing its best to affirm Martin’s current and evolving interpretation of it, James has spent the day removing the beach sand and shell from underneath the paving in the SE aisle.
So far, the SE room has contained mainly fish and seal bones and shells while the W room has been full of red deer and cattle bones. Fittingly, in the W room, Declan has found a red deer hoof as he continues to work on his grid while Jem works on the sondage through the current hearth.
In the central room, Quin and Peter spotted the tiniest peace of copper alloy – we may be in our final trowel strokes, but nothing escapes our notice. Soon, Quin will be lifting the hearth slab that sits close to the wall after excavating more deposits in the S room.
Astrid continues her “controlled destruction” of the wall between Structures J1 and U3, which gives us a better view of the back wall of Structure J1. This is exciting because Ole is now confident that adjacent Structures J1 and U3 were initially connected – a possibility we had been talking about for a while now.
Those of you who have visited us on site will be happy to hear that the two beautiful shelves in Structure J1 and the furnishings in Structure U1 including the three-tiered playfully nicknamed “cocktail cabinet” were all part of one wall. What a sight that must have been!
Bev is still carefully excavating through her beautiful burnt charcoal layer in Structure U4 where she, ever eagle-eyed, found a small piece of copper alloy. She is currently preparing to lift a piece of non-oak deciduous wood from the grid square next to where she previously found a piece of pine driftwood. In Structure U1, Ole and Matt have also found a burnt log between the paving slabs – a great day for environmental archaeologists – as well as a polishing stone and more pottery.
Last, but definitely not least, in Structure B2 Iain, at this stage a lone fighter apart from his faithful supervisor Saffy (our site dog) have excavated the hearth to its bare bones. In the corners at the top of the hearth, Iain found some stellar-smooth round pebbles with small, lined marks on them. The placement appears quite intentional. Possible slag from iron working, which we know was happening on site, was deposited next to the pebbles.
All round, an exciting day of careful excavation, continued investigations and new discoveries at our fascinating Iron Age settlement overlooking the sea.
Julia Brunner
UHI Archaeology Institute PhD student
