Excavation
Date 16 September 2015 - 20 September 2015
Event ID 1026108
Category Recording
Type Excavation
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1026108
ND 3210 4573 A fairly small-scale exploratory excavation took place at the Burn of Swartigill, 16–20 September 2015. The work was undertaken in collaboration with the Yarrows Heritage Trust and with good attendance from volunteers from the local community.
The aims were modest and linked to scoping out the site for a potential, more expansive, future piece of work. One of the project objectives was to ‘ground-truth’ a geophysical survey undertaken in an earlier episode of work by ORCA. This survey had potentially pointed to the presence of a substantial rectangular building form, perhaps a post-broch Iron Age period ‘Wag’ a form of building well known in Caithness and Sutherland.
A second aim was to try to establish something of the character of archaeological remains that had been discovered eroding out from the side of the Burn of Swartigill and recorded and reported in 2012 by Yarows Heritage Trust. These remains had included probable masonry and an interesting, possibly two-phased, assemblage of Iron Age ceramics.
A small excavation trench (c3.5 x 3.0m) was placed to incorporate part of the erosion front, a more extensive area behind and a long narrow extension c3m running southwards. While a series of small trial trenches (1 x 1m, 1 x 1m and 2 x 1m respectively) were opened to give keyhole views into some of the other geophysical anomalies picked up in the survey. Substantial alluvial deposits from the floodplain of the burn were found to shroud archaeological remains to the S of the burn frontage itself, but there was a substantial mass of stone work, rubble and well preserved archaeological features lying beneath this alluvium. This was traceable as a fairly unprepossessing low rise in the modern ground surface. It can be tentatively suggested that the orientation of linear wall lines revealed in the main trench indicate a match to the rectilinear anomaly apparent in the geophysics, and these may reflect a long building orientated with its long axis at right angles to the stream. A pronounced gully or channel was identified running through the mass of rubble in one area. A section through the gully located a large subterranean stone-lined feature, probably a drain. The drain implies some element of water management, possibly beyond that required in a normal domestic space, and it could be connected to a range of possible different activities. Samples taken from the drain will hopefully yield well preserved environmental evidence and may even have implications for the role of the site and its proximity to the Burn of Swartigill.
Near to the burn it was possible to link the previously evaluated archaeological remains present in the erosion front with those in the main trench and in several of the small test trenches, and to establish that certain previously recorded massive blocks of stone and other features were indeed parts of wall lines and wall faces seen more clearly in the main trench. A significant assemblage of diagnostic ceramic sherds including well made, decorated Iron Age pottery, was recovered from contexts both abutting, and overlying, the wall lines, and much of this ceramic material is identical to sherds recovered in the earlier stage of work. A quern rubber came from the rubble mass and a hammer stone from the fill of the drain feature. Slightly more surprising, given the
relatively modest scope and scale of the excavations but no less welcome, was the discovery of a copper alloy artefact. In appearance this was a small abraded triangular fragment abraded smooth but nevertheless preserving indications of a deeply set ‘cell’ perhaps for an enamel inlay. This would appear to have been a relatively valuable item from something like a brooch or a decorative fitting.
One of the test trenches that had been set-out to explore a curvilinear anomaly on the geophysics encountered a probable stone dyke that may date to the post-medieval period.
Archive: Local Museums Services (intended)
Funder: Caithness and North Sutherland Fund and Yarrows
Martin Carruthers – Archaeology Institute, UHI
(Source: DES, Volume 16)