Pressure builds on penultimate day
Having completed the work of excavating Structure B2 yesterday, I now have the pleasure and privilege of writing the penultimate blog from The Cairns.
Before giving you a run down of the dig today, I would just like to thank everyone who worked with me on Structure B2 over the course of the last six weeks – you all helped in completing a full excavation of this wag-like building. Thank you!
Starting on the outside of the broch with the frontage area, under the sure-footed guidance and supervision of Holly. In Structure V, Ella, Indy, and Julia have been excavating the floor deposits on a grid system, while sampling 100 per cent of the recovered deposits.
This grid method will allow for some quite high-resolution analysis of the floor deposits and give us a good idea of what this space was used for. While carrying out this task they have found some small bones which will be examined at a later date. With the clock ticking they are about to start chasing through these deposits in search of the natural glacial till.
Up closer to the front wall of the broch, Holly, Elspeth, Ross, and Sterling have been getting stuck into the fill of the drain in Structure T. Sterling recovered a deer mandible from the upper layers.
Elspeth and Ross have just removed a large, heavy covering slab and are now digging down through the drain fill in another attempt to find the natural till before the hangman’s noose tightens and the digging has to stop. Holly has lots of context sheets to complete at home tonight!
In Structure K, an area of metalworking, Nico has been working solo while excavating the remains of the furnace, finding a large lump of slag.
The section has been extended through the overspill from the furnace, again, with 100 per cent of the recovered material being bagged for sampling and analysis.
Jo has been acting as the “Kubiena-tin-flying-squad”, taking samples from the section of the furnace. The samples in the Kubiena tins can be thinly sliced and closely analysed under the microscope. This will hopefully allow us to see the fuel that was used and whether the furnace was used multiple times or was just used once.
Sticking with the outside areas, Structures ‘U’ and ‘J’ under Ole, have been receiving the attentions of Bev, Astrid, and Matt.
Ole and Matt have been excavating the floor layer within the large stone chamber. This has revealed a possible redeposited natural clay layer. Within this layer are charcoal and ashy lenses, which likely provide some decent dateable material. In the smaller more intricate “cocktail cabinet”, Matt recovered some antler which had been pushed into the blockwork. The antler was approximately 12cm in length.
Astrid, now working in Structure J, discovered some stonework which appears to have been coloured with a yellow pigment. In that fine Iron Age tradition, a stone quern was jammed into the corner of the structure.
Bev, in Structure U4, found a large chunk of deciduous wood, approximately 10cm in diameter by 20cm in length. Again, Jo was running around taking samples of the floor deposits in Kubiena tins.
It looks as though Structures U and J were at one time one large building running along the broch wall, covering about a fifth of the outside face of the broch.
News just in from Ole: they have discovered natural under the paving in U1!
We will now move into the broch itself, starting at the entrance and moving around the inside in the favourite direction of the Iron Age: clockwise/sunwise.
In the entrance, Martin has been working hard in an attempt to distract himself from the impending monograph and what he’s going to do with the future summers from here on in. Martin has removed the upper layer of stone paving revealing a thin occupation deposit and another layer of paving beneath, with some lovely stone tools embedded in between the paving.
In the south-east room, closest to the entrance, Emily and James have been excavating the floor deposits, revealing a nice stone tool and some large terrestrial mammal long bones. Moving further into the room, Amanda and Scott have been getting stuck into the floor deposits as well.
Scott is putting in a sondage through some highly compacted, heat affected layers, that are hopefully sitting just above the natural ground layer. Amanda has been digging through these layers, further to the south, and has discovered a linear cut running towards the broch wall. This linear feature is lined with stones and again contains a deposited stone tool and a piece of whalebone.
Quin and Peter have been working hard in the south room. Quin has lifted the stone slab of the hearth and has begun excavating underneath. The sondage through the floor to the natural looks spectacular, the colours within resembling the sunsets here in Orkney. Jo has been at it again with the Kubiena tins in this room too.
Peter has been working in the central chamber and has arguably found the best find of the day, another perforated bone mount.
In the west room, Gem, Declan, and Travis have been going hard at the floor deposits hunting the natural. Travis has recovered a round quern shoved up against the internal wall of the broch. Jem is digging a section down through the layers of the hearth and Declan has been finding some pottery and a number of stone tools. Again, the sampling has been 100 per cent.
Finally, to Thore in the north room, who has single-handedly replaced the grid sampling lines and has been digging under a small hearth here. This has revealed layers of red heat affected stone that have shattered and are difficult to dig through. This area has thrown up some lovely thick sherds of pot.
Thanks for sticking with me through this frantic update.
Everyone is beginning to feel the pressure and are in a hurry to complete the task and the ever-present paperwork, or as I heard it called recently “administrivia”, which is anything but trivial.
Final day tomorrow…
Iain Healy
UHI MSc Archaeological Practice student
