Publication Account
Date 2002
Event ID 586030
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/586030
HY74 5 TOFTS NESS ('Toftsness', 'Taft's Ness')
HY/757464
Early Iron Age roundhouse in Lady parish on Sanday. The site was excavated in advance of land improvement from 1985 to 1988 and work was focussed on the roundhouse and on systematically examining the surrounding prehistoric soils. Interim accounts of the latter have been published and some significant inferences made [2, 3]. Fragments of another, earlier roundhouse were found.
There are a variety of other ancient structures in this area, including “earth-houses” [5] and graves. In 1885 J.W.Cursiter showed some finds of Iron Age type "from a broch on Toftsness, Sanday" at the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland [4]. They included several awls (“borers”), presumably of bone, and some grooved pumice sharpeners. A rough stone whorl is in his collection at the Hunterian Museum (B.1914.810). It may be that these finds came from the recently discovered roundhouse .
Sources: 1. OS card HY74 NE 1: 2. Discovery and Excavation in Scotland 1985, 32: 1986, 220-3: 1987, 36: 1988, 29: 3. Dockrill 2002, 156-58 and refs.. 4. Proc Soc Antiq Scot 19 (1884-1985), 139: 5. RCAHMS 1946, 2, 172-3, no. 474.
E W MacKie 2002
