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Archaeology Notes

Event ID 645056

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/645056

HY40NW 1 4345 0878.

(HY 4345 0878) Brough (OE)

OS 6" map, Orkney, 2nd ed., (1903).

"Broch of Lingro ... the remains of a broch remarkable for the extent and complex character of the outbuildings on the S, SE & SW They were excavated in 1879 by Petrie, when the ground plan here reproduced was made in collaboration with Dryden (Portfolio I A 41 in National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland (NMAS) [Dryden]), but, owing to Petrie's death, no detailed account of the excavation was prepared. At that time but little of the wall of the broch remained, and, as the ruins have since become completely covered with grass, nothing but the outline of the main structure can now be traced. .... The position of the extensive buildings can still be determined at various points by a number of isolated stones set on edge, usually in pairs, that are apparently in situ, but the eleborate details shown in the plan cannot now be identified with any confidence .... The relics included a large number of querns and quartz pebbles indented on their flat sides by use as Strike-a-lights, a stone lamp, many implements of red-deer horn, bone pins, needles and long- handled combs, spindle-whorls of stone and steatite, some fragments of bronze, a clay mould for casting bronze pins with open circular heads, playing dice of bone, forty-six fragments of unglazed pottery .... and charred barley. In various parts of the outbuildings several Roman coins were recovered including denarii of Vespasian (AD 69-79), Hadrian (AD 117-138), Antonius Pius (AD 138-161)", two of Antonius Pius (J Anderson 1883) and two coins of Crispina (AD 180-83) (PSAS 1873 Donations).

RCAHMS 1946.

Several bone implements, including a broch comb, long-handled, made from the stump of a deer's horn, ornamented with design of St. Andrew's Cross and having 9 teeth, found in the out-buildings were exhibited 9th March 1855 at the NMAS.

Proc Soc Antiq Scot 1885 (Exhibits).

Although the remains of this broch are mutilated and covered with rough grass, the entrance, in the south, and the chamber on each side of the entrance can still be determined. The outbuildings are only visible as rough, grass-covered, low banks and mounds.

Re-surveyed at 1/2500.

Visited by OS(RD) 9 April 1964.

Bulldozed by farmer, February 1981.

Rescue News 1981; The Orcadian 26 February 1981.

Bone dice found; now lost. Apparently associated with two coins of Crispina.

D V Clarke 1970; E J Mackie 1971.

'The Saturday Herald and Shetland Gazette' in 1871 briefly mentions the broch and that Roman coins had been donated to the S A S Museum.

M Howe 2006

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References