Note
Date 1983
Event ID 1156267
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Note
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1156267
Tuquoy, Westside HY 4543 4313 HY44SE 5
Excavation at a point some 70m W of Cross Kirk (NY44SE 1), coupled with survey work, and the recording of the eroding adjacent cliff section were carried out in 1982. The cliff section reveals traces of settlement along a stretch at least 75m long, comprising complex structures of differing phases, with associated flagged floors, slab-lined drains, with midden and other occupation debris, both inside and outside the buildings. Steatite bowl fragments, coarse pottery, an end fragment of bone comb, a chalk spindle whorl and a possible ring-headed pin of bronze were discovered; they indicate that most of the settlement derives from the Norse period. However, a silted-up passageway, with a flagged base bordered by walls on each side, may be the remains of an earlier structure, perhaps a souterrain; and at the E end of the section, a deep pit filled with waterlogged, anaerobic material, exceptional in the Northern Isles, containing well-preserved wood and other environmental evidence, is overlain by layers of peat ash, 1.2m in depth, packed with fire-shattered rubble, perhaps representing a burnt mound. Excavation centred around four substantial walls of dressed masonry, visible in the cliff section and standing to a maximum height of 1.1 m, and immediately adjacent to each other. One wall has a width of 1.42m, suggesting a defensive function, and taken together with another wall located at right angles to it, may prove to be the remains of a tower, perhaps originally square. A secondary building phase is represented by an extension to the S, which is plastered internally with a yellowish-white lime plaster, indicating a date not before the twelfth century. Other structural remains on the site include a curving wall suggesting a circular construction; a complex sequence of buildings immediately to the N, including a broad wall, 1.3m wide, constructed in two phases, and other early walls in the E. Altogether, at least five separate constructional phases of probable late Norse date have already been identified, representing considerable rebuilding and continued and extended occupation of the site over a period of time. The site is comparatively rich in finds of metalwork, bone and stone objects, considerable quantities of coarse pottery and other occupational debris. Excavations will continue in 1983.
RCAHMS 1983.
(Lamb 1981; DES, 1982, 18-19; Owen 1982; OR 710).
