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Excavation
Date 1960
Event ID 605936
Category Recording
Type Excavation
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/605936
(HY 2428 2837) A possible Iron Age settlement, of which six or seven huts remain, was excavated by Wainwright at the Point of Buckquoy in 1960.
The excavations revealed the remains of two stone-built huts in
sections 'A' and 'B', of which half of one had been eroded by the sea (the greatest dimension of the remains of this one was about 14ft). The lowest course of the walls was a row of upright stones. A circular hearth, about 4ft in diameter and edged with a kerb of upright stones 6 to 7ins high, was found in section 'C': its relationship to the huts is not clear.
The huts were built with a common wall, as at Skara Brae (HY21NW 12), in the core of which were found animal bones, etc., and were probably erected on the surface of the ground rather than partly buried: windblown sand had piled up on the outside, and also inside the huts, where it preceeded the collapse of the huts. The debris within the eroded hut, and its corbelled walls, suggested that the roof was of stone slabs and that the hut was beehive-shaped.
Finds, none of which were datable, included hundreds of shells and much animal, fish and bird bone: their distribution showed that the site was also occupied before the construction and after the collapse of the huts.
The excavations were subsequently filled in.
Information taken from Orkney Survey of 1969 (Wainwrights MS notes etc now in the possession of RCAHMS).
