Archaeology Notes

Event ID 645438

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/645438

HY50NE 20 5917 0743.

A stony mound, about 6ft high, at Riggin of Kami, is a probable broch. Walling 13ft 6ins thick shows on the N side and, many years ago, a ruined stair, no longer visible, was found in the mound. There is a considerable kitchen-midden on the W side, and there are outbuildings adjacent.

RCAHMS 1946, visited 4 June 1930

All that remains at this site are slight traces of dry-stone walling and a scatter of stones around the N side of a grass-covered mound. No trace of the midden could be found around the area of the broch.

Surveyed at 1:2500.

Visited by OS, 30 August 1964

The mound at Riggin of Kami extends across the promontory. There are depressions suggesting chambers in it, and odd lengths of walling visible through the grass. Behind it are several hut circles. This is not a broch, but a defensive structure similar to the Midhowe forework - related to Shetland 'blockhouse' forts.

Information from R G Lamb, 17 August 1970

A curving grass-covered bank spread to about 9.0m in width and 1.5m high covering a collapsed wall which appears to have been too extensive to have been part of a broch. The "depressions suggesting chambers" seen by Lamb appear to be where the wall has been dug into, and there is nothing else to suggest chambers. Insufficient can be seen to classify the site, but Lamb's suggestion of a blockhouse fort should not be disregarded. Lamb's "hut circles" immediately to the E are two small hollows, probably natural or a result of quarrying. No sign of the midden. Traces of indeterminate structures outside the wall to the S may be the "outbuildings" noted by RCAHMS.

Surveyed at 1:2500.

Visited by OS 21 May 1973

On the landward end of the triangular cliff-promontory extending towards Moustack (HY50NE 28), there is a site, long regarded as a possible broch; prior to excavation it took the form of a broad, curving mound, with traces of domestic structures on the promontory itself and a very extensive midden deposit in the adjacent field to landward. Excavation in 1981-82, cut short by the death of the director, Mr P S Gelling, revealed a regularly curving segment of ground-galleried broch-type wall, which was thought to be structure of 'semibroch' type rather than a fragment of circular structure.

RCAHMS 1946; R G Lamb 1980; K A Steedman 1980; RCAHMS 1987.

From the exposed floor area of the broch, 17 sherds of pottery were recovered; 12 sherds are from a slipped and roughly burnished vessel with an everted rounded rim.

B Smith 1988.