Excavation
Date 24 July 2010 - 30 August 2010
Event ID 881170
Category Recording
Type Excavation
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/881170
HY 2365 1962 This project focuses on building landscape context for erosive coastal areas with significant windblown
sand. A previous survey in 2003 and further survey and excavations in 2004–8 concentrated on the N bay environs.
Gradiometry showed a dense concentration of magnetic anomalies in the ‘Castle of Snusgar’ and neighbouring mounds. The concentration of multi-period ‘mound’ sites around the N of the Bay of Skaill can now be expanded from one to at least five foci (excluding Broch of Verron, HY21NW 22).
Work from 24 July–30 August 2010 focused on an area initially opened as a test trench in 2005 on the mound 100m to the East of ‘Castle of Snusgar’, which had revealed Viking and Norse period middens stratified over a well preserved stone building with in situ orthostatic internal divisions or ‘furniture’. Excavation continued in 2006–8 and was extended in 2010. A coherent complex of stone walls has now been revealed standing up to 1m high with clearly defined internal and external areas, stone flagged floors, yards and entrances. External to the buildings exposed in8 2005–8 (now viewed as outbuildings) was a square ‘yard’
area which was heavily burnt and contained very large quantities of metalworking waste, ferrous and non-ferrous slag. This was fully excavated in 2010, revealing a series of four well preserved bowl hearths separated by laminated clay floors, and producing large amounts of ferrous and some non-ferrous metalworking residues. These are now being assessed at NMS. Radiocarbon dates taken in 2008 indicate that the upper fills of the metalworking features contain charred material from around AD 1000. Outside and to the SE of the frequently rebuilt ancillary buildings were rich, deep midden deposits. Underlying these were a drain system and an earlier phase of stone buildings of a less rectilinear, more curvilinear plan, perhaps dating to the early- or even the pre-Viking period.
In 2008 the central section of a much larger longhouse, with walls standing over a metre, was exposed immediately to the N of the buildings excavated in 2005–7. Connected to them by a staircase and flagged yard. In 2008 the longhouse was seen as a stone flagged entrance area, a drain and central walkway to the E, and box benches and hearth deposits to the W. Strong evidence for spatial zoning in the character of deposits and a stub wall indicated the division between animal and domestic occupation. Finds and a coherent group of radiocarbon dates (SUERC, 2008, 2009) provided a Viking/Late Norse date between AD c1000–1200. The longhouse building was almost fully exposed in 2010 (with only a small section in the W end remaining unexcavated between two trenches). Both ends of the building were identified, confirming it at 23.6m long, with intact stone side benches, laminated floors and hearths, sunken stone-lined box-pits, and symmetrically sited postholes. The building was constructed in at least three phases; beginning with a simple bow-sided longhouse, later extended E to create the byre/working area (when the stub wall was probably built), and W, with a substantial rectilinear longhouse style extension to the living area. The western extension was constructed with wider side-benches and cooking hearths in a central kerbed zone. The internal entrance passage between the dwelling area and byre was well preserved with the door socket in situ. All finds and samples were 3-D plotted and stratigraphic analysis, phasing and further radiocarbon dating are under
way. Animal bone preservation was good and environmental samples are being assessed. Finds are currently undergoing conservation.
Archive: Currently with University of Oxford. Reports: HS, Orkney
Museum and RCAHMS
Funder: Historic Scotland, University of Oxford and Orkney Islands
Council
