Bay Of Skaill

HY21NW 54 centred on 2349 1891

The following areas were surveyed in June and July 2003 as part of the Birsay-Skaill Landscape Project.

HY 236 196 to HY 230 187 Bay of Skaill. Survey was concentrated in two areas: the mound on the N side of the bay known as the 'Castle of Snusgar' which was the site of the 1858 Viking silver hoard; and the immediate environs of Skara Brae within the World Heritage Site area to the S. The Snusgar survey started with 3D electronic topographical modelling - a flat platform on the NW of the mound was mapped, almost certainly the site where a stone building once stood (visible until the 18th century). Magnetometry confirmed that this prominent rise in the landscape is a major settlement mound with probable medieval, Norse and Neolithic components.

Survey around Skara Brae itself was relatively limited, but showed that an 'igneous dike' passes almost underneath the settlement, and that there are further archaeological features including linears and discrete anomalies both around Skara Brae and the large settlement mound to the W (HY21NW 30), which is currently suffering severe cliff face erosion. Two 30 x 30m magnetometry grids close to Skara Brae allowed a repeat of part of a 1973 geophysical survey, and this cast informative new light on the earlier data.

Report to be lodged with Orkney SMR and the NMRS.

Sponsors: Orkney Islands Council, Orkney Heritage, University of Oxford.

D Griffiths 2003

HY 236 196 Bay of Skaill. Resistivity survey.

Reports to be lodged with Orkney SMR and the NMRS.

Sponsors: HS, Orkney Islands Council, University of Oxford.

D Griffiths 2004

HY 236 196 Bay of Skaill. Previous survey (DES 2003, 101) was concentrated on the mound on the N side of the bay, known as the Castle of Snusgar, which was the site of the 1858 Viking silver hoard. Gradiometry showed a dense concentration of magnetic anomalies in the Snusgar mound, which were provisionally interpreted as indicating that the mound is a multi-period archaeological feature.

Topographical and geophysical survey were extended considerably in 2004 in collaboration with the newly established geophysics unit at Orkney College. Twenty grids of resistivity (20 x 20m) were carried out on the Snusgar mound itself, and 34 grids of gradiometry were carried out on Snusgar, a neighbouring (lower) mound immediately to its NW, a mound cut by the road (HY21NW 23), and a further mound some 60m to the E of Snusgar. With the exception of the latter mound, all targets showed dense anomalies indicating archaeological potential: the concentration of multi-period sites around the N of the bay can now be expanded from one to at least three foci.

Two trenches were opened in the NE flank of the Snusgar mound. The subsidiary trench on the furthest E flank of the mound was intended to provide a soils history in profile.

The main trench, nearer the summit of the mound, encountered a spread of industrial waste: date as yet unknown, but may be relatively recent, possibly from kelp burning as burnt seaweed was retrieved from environmental samples. Beneath and outwith this concentration were laminated sand/occupation layers surrounding stone structures. Some of these were disturbed and fragmentary, but there was a large E-W double-faced wall, 1.2-1.5m wide, which corresponds with the E-W structural features observed in the 2003 gradiometry plot, and which were provisionally interpreted as part of the phase which gave rise to the notion of the Norse 'castle'. The occupation layers, which may be outcast midden from a settlement core immediately to the W of the excavation area, were associated with a range of (mostly bone) finds of Viking period type, and a green banded whetstone with parallels associated with high-status Viking sites in Scandinavia. Bone preservation was good and a large range of animal bone was retrieved, with some fish bone from lower occupation layers. Environmental samples indicate that oat cereal grain, six-row hulled barley and flax were present, along with burnt peat. Other significant finds include polished bone pins, antler comb fragments, bone textile utensils, a copper-alloy toilet implement and a small amount of iron slag.

Progress was made in characterising this upper phase of the mound - part or all of which was resting on a substantial layer of windblown sand, but time did not permit deeper investigation within and beneath this windblown layer.

Reports to be lodged with Orkney SMR and the NMRS.

Sponsors: HS, Orkney Islands Council, University of Oxford.

D Griffiths 2004

HY 236 196 Bay of Skaill. Magnetometry survey.

Reports to be lodged with Orkney SMR and the NMRS.

Sponsors: HS, Orkney Islands Council, University of Oxford.

D Griffiths 2004