Dig Diary – new diggers, shifting midden and more on the Structure Twelve puppy

Day Eleven
Monday, July 8, 2024

Another Monday, so another intake of new diggers to swell our numbers. Most were familiar faces who have dug on site before, so the morning began with catching up with old friends.

Among the latest arrivals were students from the UHI Archaeology Institute, who, after the usual site induction process, were put to work on Trench Z.

The number of students, compared to the size of the trench, meant some cramped working conditions, so it was soon decided to extend Trench Z slightly to provide a little more elbow room. Their goal is to reach Structure Two – revealed in 2005 – and expose more of the building so we can see how it fits into the site chronology.

Looking after the students for the duration of their field school is Ness regular Kevin Kerr and today he was joined by Dr Ben Elliot, lecturer and programme leader of the UHI Archaeology Institute undergraduate courses.

Also back on site was Ness stalwart Dr Hugo Anderson-Whymark, senior curator of prehistory (Neolithic) at National Museums Scotland. Hugo dug the Ness complex for many years and, last year, revealed a long-forgotten Neolithic chambered cairn in the East Mainland parish of Holm.

After a brief break, Travis returned to Structure Ten today, where he and Jill have almost finished sampling the primary floor under the north-eastern buttress.

That done, they will be able to extend the sondage (narrow, deep trench) over Structure Twenty – one of Ten’s predecessors – to provide a larger, and clearer, window into Twenty and the stone pier exposed in 2023.

Our current phasing of the site puts Structure Twenty roughly contemporary to the neighbouring Structures Eight, Twelve and One.

At the opposite side of Ten’s interior, what appears to be a curious hearthstone has emerged. But is it actually a hearth or something else? Something that doesn’t relate to Structure Ten or Twenty but perhaps a phase of activity in between?

At present it seems that whatever it represents was smashed through when divisional orthostats were inserted into Ten’s interior.

Time will tell, so watch this space.

Our Neolithic art specialist, Dr Antonia Thomas, has been looking at decorated stones that can be extracted from buildings before we finish excavation in August.

Today, she recovered a block from the recess in the “arm” marking the northern end of Structure Ten’s forecourt. We’ve known that the stone, with its natural “saltire” design, was there for many years, but its condition has deteriorated over time. Its removal means it can now be preserved.

What the stone shows is that the Neolithic builders were actively choosing stones with natural patterning and building them into the structures in exactly the sort of places that we find incised rock art.

Under the paving outside Ten’s north-western corner is another decorated stone being considered for extraction. The sondage required for its removal will have the added benefit of clarifying what else is going on in the area – particularly relating to a suspected drain.

In Structure Eight, we’re back to hearths. And the removal of the hearth overlying Structure Seventeen – one of Eight’s two predecessors. This will allow the diggers to reveal the full internal plan of Seventeen.

After the cleaning and sampling process is complete, we’ll decide how best to progress. One option is a series of sondages to look at the potential floor sequences in Seventeen.

Meanwhile, south of Structure Eight, the excavation of the hearth of Structure Thirty-Four has revealed it to be yet another with a stone base – the third exposed this season!

In a desperate attempt to avoid the chaos under Structure Twelve (at least temporarily) we’ll turn now to Structure One, where Phillip and Lucy continued to remove the floor deposits in the building’s south end.

At the north end, we welcomed back Emma – a former Willamette student, from the USA, who is back for her third time. Last year, in the same area, her eagle-eyes spotted a beautiful fragment of decorated stone.

Emma was joined today by UHI Archaeology Institute MRes student Kariane and they continued the investigations into the midden and potential collapsed wall underlying Structure One.

Over in Trench T, the operation to remove huge quantities of midden from above Structure Twenty-Seven continued apace. As Ben and Tom’s wheelbarrows squeaked up and down the ramp at the edge of the trench, Chris tackled the mountains of paperwork involved in an excavation of so much material.

The removal of the midden serves two purposes. Firstly, stripping it back is for purely health and safety reasons. The wall of midden looming over the north end of Twenty-Seven was becoming unstable in places so needed to be removed before work in the vicinity could resume.

Secondly, it has exposed more of Twenty-Seven (and will continue to), revealing more of its enigmatic layout and perhaps even a clearer indication as to the form of its entrance.

We should be removing the floor coverings from the building tomorrow, ready for work to reach the occupation deposits to resume.

Among the finds recovered from the midden was a fragment of a large, doughnut-shaped Iron Age weight. The work also revealed a big, Neolithic decorated stone that had been incorporated into the revetting that lined the Iron Age ditch at the top of the midden mound.

And now on to Structure Twelve. I can’t put it off any longer!

Firstly, a correction.

On Friday, while trying to make sense of the morass of walls, voids and assorted delights in, and under, the building, I confidently said that the additional sections of Structure Twenty-Eight’s inner wall face cast doubt on the idea that Twelve’s predecessor was reduced in size at some point in its life.

It didn’t. In fact, today it’s looking more likely than ever.

It seems Twenty-Eight was not only wider than we originally thought – by about one metre – but, like Structure One, was reduced in size when the curved wall was inserted across its interior.

The addition of the wall ties in with what is appearing in Twelve’s northern end – pits, holes, collapse and voids. If these were affecting Twenty-Eight’s original interior, we’re pondering whether its users just gave up trying to fill the holes and instead resized the building, leaving the problem area beyond the new outer wall.

As always watch this space. Twelve likes to keep us on our toes!

At the southern end of the building, Jan was back over a gorgeously orange ash pit that may have been another “slow cooker” area. Her goal is to remove the mound of ash to reveal what lies beneath.

New arrival Sue has been tasked to continue investigating the floor deposits in the north-eastern alcove, which lie over more of Structure Twenty-Eight’s internal wall face.

Outside the southern end, Chris began looking for a suspected drain running from the building’s interior. There’s no sign of it yet, but he has revealed one of Twelve’s stepped foundation stones.

Back inside the building, at Michaela’s sondage at the southern base of the west-central pier, we seem to have more evidence that the Ness builders recognised the problems inherent with constructing new over old and took steps to try and minimise them.

Anyone who has listened to Sigurd bang on about subsidence during the site tours will know that it was a problem across the site. A problem that centred on the consistent building on top of earlier structures and which brought major structural issues.

When it came time to erect a new building, its predecessor was partially dismantled and flat platform of midden laid on top. Although this provided a level surface for the new construction it brought with it a critical problem – subsidence. The soft midden compressed beneath the weight of the walls leading to catastrophic collapses in at least three of the excavated buildings.

So, from the outset, problems with their foundations meant that the buildings were doomed to collapse. The big question has always been whether the builders knew this was an inevitable outcome.

Our investigations in Structure Twelve suggest that they did and went to some lengths to prevent it.

Under the west-central pier, the sondage suggests that the builders cut a pit through the remains of Twenty-Eight to underpin the planned construction of Twelve’s pier. They recognised there would be problems so inserted masonry to create a stable base.

Something similar occurred in Structure Ten, where its builders went to extraordinary measures to combat the subsidence that had plagued its predecessors.

In both cases, however, their efforts were in vain and both collapsed.

Lets leave the structural conundrums there for tonight and return to the canine remains found in the drain from Structure Twelve’s north-western corner recess last week.

UHI Archaeology Institute zooarchaeologist Professor Ingrid Mainland was on site at the end of last week and took the opportunity to examine the remarkably well-preserved skeletal remains.

She confirmed that the young dog was around six-months-old (definitely less than nine-months-old) at death and was the offspring of a small, terrier-sized “breed”.

We have found canine remains before, but these have just been small, dispersed fragments from various contexts across the site. In contrast, the Structure Twelve skeleton bears the hallmarks of a more structured, deliberate deposit.

Dog remains are also known at other Neolithic sites.

In 1973/74, during the partial excavation of the Stones of Stenness, the ditch around the monument produced canine remains – although it was suggested that, due to the size, they belonged to wolves!

Perhaps the best-known examples came from the Cuween chambered cairn, where 24 dog skulls were recovered during excavation in 1901. These came to be interpreted as evidence that dogs were significant – perhaps a totem animal – to the Neolithic people who constructed and used the passage grave.

But radiocarbon dating showed that the Cuween skulls were placed in the chamber around 2500BC, centuries after the structure’s construction and initial use.

So what does the Ness pup represent?

Its bones were found in a drain added to Structure Twelve during its phase two rebuilding/remodelling. The drain was inserted through the blocking material used to seal off Twelve’s primary north-western entrance and which created a sub-oval cell in the corner.

The remains must, therefore, be later than this, but placed before the building went out of use, around 2700BC.

The evidence suggests that Twelve was deliberately demolished at the end of its life, with a final feast marking its decommissioning. As part of this, artefacts, interpreted as closing deposits, were placed in its northern annex, including the three fragments of a beautifully decorated “Brodgar Butterfly” stone slab.

Then the remains of the building were completely buried in huge quantities of midden.

The volume of this midden makes it unlikely that the young dog was a later, natural or accidental intrusion. The presence of other animal and bird bone accompanying its remains suggests we have another example of the strange deposits found across the site. In this case, does it represent another closing deposit?

The diminutive size of the animal is interesting. Only one of the Cuween dog skulls is accounted for and is now held by the National Museums of Scotland. Forensic examination suggested the skull belonged to an animal the size of a large collie.

We hope to submit the Structure Twelve pup’s remains for DNA analysis as part of a larger project.

And on that note, it’s been a bumper diary today, so I think we’ll leave it at that.

See you tomorrow…