Category: The Cairns

Our ongoing excavation at The Cairns is the subject of this year’s summer exhibition at the Stromness Museum.

The Orkney Archaeology Society talk on the ongoing excavation at the Iron Age site at The Cairns, South Ronaldsay, Orkney, is now available online.

“The Life and Times of The Cairns : A Thousand Years of living at a Broch” was given by University of the Highlands and Islands Archaeology Institute lecturer, and Cairns site director, Martin Carruthers.

Dr Simon Gilmour, director of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, discusses the post-excavation work at the ongoing University of the Highlands and Islands Archaeology Institute excavation at The Cairns, South Ronaldsay, Orkney.

A new radiocarbon date for a shell-filled pit at The Cairns Iron Age site in South Ronaldsay shows that it was in use in the fifth or sixth century AD.

The pit appears to have been used to cook shellfish and after consumption, their shells, all 18,637 of them, were put back in it.

A tiny sliver found during soil-sample processing has brought the number of ancient glass fragments from the interior of The Cairns broch to nine.

However, unlike most of the eleven examples of glass recovered across the South Ronaldsay site, this dark-green shard does not appear to be a bead fragment but may instead have come from Roman glassware.

As a society we are aided in our understanding of the Covid-19 emergency and the way we can address the social, economic and political effects through our use of technology…..but what of society in the Iron Age? How did they cope with emergencies that affected their way of life? Did they change their way of doing things permanently?