Archaeology Notes

Event ID 784061

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/784061

HY50SE 15 5729 0497

OS record card missing

A most interesting series of discoveries was made in 1974 by Mr R Eunson when demolishing a small derelict cottage to make way for improvements. The cottage was probably of nineteenth-century date, but its N wall rested on a layer of earth, beneath which there was an earlier wall of better-quality build than the cottage. Beneath the cottage floor, within a deposit about 1m thick, were two earlier floors and some shell midden material. During excavations, several Norse objects, now in Tankerness House Museum, Kirkwall, were discovered: three whorls, whetstone. a sandstone sinker, a pouring spout from a steatite vessel, a lead weight, and a perforated bone disc. Elsewhere on the farm at a different time was found a Nuremberg 'jetton' of gold, also now in the Museum.

K A Steedman 1980; RCAHMS 1987.