Dig Diary – bones, drains and rainbows

Wednesday, August 7, 2024 (9:13 PM)

Calling it a day. Structure Twenty-Seven is covered over this afternoon when it became clear the rain was here to stay. (📷 Sigurd Towrie)

Day Thirty-Five
Wednesday, August 7, 2024

Sara with her second hollowed cobble tool. (📷 Jo Bourne)

We woke this morning to a weather forecast no less ominous than last night’s. So it was with a sense of dread that the Ness team gathered on site this morning.

Fortunately, it proved to be a better day than expected – although there were a few unpleasant and heavy rain showers, followed by a more persistent spell in late afternoon that saw digging end and everyone sent home.

In between the rain, however, we continued to make good progress, with more finds and revelations across the site.

In Structure Five, supervisor Paul set to untangling an orangey, ashy deposit in the building’s southern end. And by the time digging ended this afternoon he had confirmed we have an earlier building underneath Structure Five.

The proof came in the form of hearth deposits beneath Five’s floor. The form of that building, and its hearth, remains to be seen.

So far this season, we’ve found a number of stone tools that appear to have been deliberately deposited in and around Five’s furniture features.

Lindsay excavating the whalebone artefact in Structure Five. (📷 Jo Bourne)

Today, working on another one of these features, adjacent to one of the building’s substantial post-holes, Lindsay revealed a whalebone artefact.

Unfortunately it was not in great condition, so its role or function is not clear, but its location near a post-hole brings to mind the deposition of a whale vertebra in the south-western post-hole in 2022.

Sara's second hollowed cobble from Structure Twelve. (📷 Jo Bourne) — Sara’s second hollowed cobble from Structure Twelve. (📷 Jo Bourne)

After finding a hollowed cobble in Structure Twelve’s north-western recess yesterday, Sara was clearly on a roll. Today, she found another, this one with hollows on two of its six faces.

But that’s not all. Shortly afterwards she found the shattered remains of a stone axe in a pocket between Twelve and its predecessor Structure Twenty-Eight.

The fragments of the polished stone axe. (📷 Jo Bourne)

A closer view of the largest axe fragment. (📷 Jo Bourne)

After viewing the axe fragments, Professor Mark Edmonds, an expert in this area, remarked that had it been in one piece it would have rivalled Structure Fourteen’s “cloud axe”, found in 2012.

The polished stone axe found in Structure Fourteen in 2012.

Elsewhere in Twelve, we have now confirmed four of Structure Twenty-Eight’s corner buttresses. Two from its primary phase and one from the secondary phase, when the building was truncated and a curving wall inserted across the northern end.

Ray and Ben excavating the bone deposit around the opening into the 'mega-drain'. (📷 Jo Bourne) — Ray and Ben excavating the bone deposit around the opening into the ‘mega-drain’. (📷 Jo Bourne)

North-east of Twelve, in Structure Thirty-Four, Ray and Ben have been excavating around the hole into the “mega-drain”. There they revealed an extensive deposit of animal bone, much of it in remarkably good condition. The acidic conditions at the Ness means that bone preservation is not great, so a find like this is particularly welcome.

Whether it relates to a deliberate deposit or is simply a dump of bone remains to be seen.

Kristina talks to Time Team's John Gater about her sondage across Structure Seventeen's floor. (📷 Jo Bourne) — Kristina talks to Time Team’s John Gater about her sondage across Structure Seventeen’s floor. (📷 Jo Bourne)

Alice photographing a cattle bone in the east-west sondage in Structure Seventee. (📷 Jo Bourne)

The cattle bone in the east-west sondage in Structure Seventee. (📷 Jo Bourne)

Anne and Kristina examine the worked stone used as a base for the southern hearth in Structure Seventeen. (📷 Jo Bourne)

And staying with drains, work inside Structure Twenty-Seven has confirmed what we already suspected – that the building’s drainage system was as elaborate and carefully planned as its construction.

One of the uncovered drain in Structure Twenty-Seven this afternoon. (📷 Sigurd Towrie)

Elsewhere excavation also confirmed the cut for the orthostat that faced the northern side of Twenty-Seven’s south-western (and robbed out) corner buttress.