Dig Diary – a dog in the drain

Day Seven
Tuesday, July 2, 2024

We gleefully welcomed a slight, improvement in the weather today. But although there wasn’t much of a rise in temperature, it allowed us to get on with excavation across the site, with a few surprise discoveries.

We’re not unfamiliar with strange deposits at the Ness – we’ve had human bone placed in Structures Ten and Seventeen/Eight and animal bone in various contexts across the site.

But over in the north-western corner of Structure Twelve excavation of a drain running from the building raised a few eyebrows.

Inside were the partial remains of a very young dog, along with bird and other animal bone. And, of course, pottery. These were carefully excavated by Liam and will be further examined by our specialist zooarchaeologist, Professor Ingrid Mainland, from the UHI Archaeology Institute later in the week.

The drain was a later addition to Structure Twelve, inserted during the process to block of the building’s primary north-western entrance, which created a sub-oval cell. A cell that clearly required drainage…

Next door to Twelve, work in a midden-filled, box-like feature in Structure Thirty-Four saw more animal bone recovered alongside a half a pottery vessel. Initial examination suggests some of the bone came from red deer, but again this will be confirmed by Ingrid when she visits the site.

Over in Structure Ten, the team continued work on two sondages (narrow, deep trenches) within the building.

Jill is working on the extension to the north-eastern sondage, which will expose more of Structure Twenty and its floor, while Ellen is at the south-western sondage, revealing what may be more structure features relating to an earlier building pre-dating the construction of Ten.

Andy’s team in Structure Ten are working in both ends of the building. In the southern half, work to remove the last of the first phase floor surface has revealed what appears to be an earlier box-like feature – but what, if anything, this relates to remains to be seen.

In the northern end, excavation of the midden deposit beneath the building has produced a series of nice finds, including early Grooved Ware pottery and flint.

Elsewhere in Structure Twelve, work is well under way. Sara is investigating the north-western recess – the so-called “slow cooker”. There, you will remember, hot ash was dumped in large quantities, upon which pots were placed – presumably to cook, or keep their contents hot.

Sara will be further investigating a series of features inserted into the ash deposits, presumably after its “slow cooker” role had ended. The features include a straight cut across the recess’ threshold and an arc of stakeholes, running north to south.

In the adjacent south-western recess Michaela and Louise are finishing off the recording of last year’s work around the “Void of Despair”.

This was the sondage inserted beside the west-central pier that led to much frustration when it revealed multiple features beneath Structure Twelve.

Once the paperwork is finished, they will extend the sondage across the entire recess so we’re look forward to seeing if the mystery of what lies beneath can be solved.

Sigurd is back to his familiar spot at the north end of the interior, trying to make sense of what was going on there and how it all relates to an apparent wall section running across the width of the building.

Meanwhile, Jan has been looking at the area where we recovered the remains of two wooden posts in 2021.

The goal is to see if, and how, these wooden features related to the entrance passage that ran from Twelve’s eastern entrance across the interior of the building.

From the north side of the eastern doorway, and running west into the building, were two rows of low orthostats. These held a partition – either stone slabs or wooden planks – that formed the north side of an entrance passage that also divided the interior of Twelve into two rooms. A similar feature was encountered in House Two at the nearby Barnhouse Settlement.

Another special find today came from the vicinity of Structure Eight.

Ray was excavating the midden layer laid over Structure Seventeen to create a level platform for the construction of Eight, when he found another piece of pitchstone.

Pitchstone is a volcanic glass, similar to obsidian, and its nearest source is the isle of Arran, off the south-west coast of Scotland. In Orkney, it has only been found at the Ness of Brodgar excavation site and the Barnhouse settlement, 400 metres to the east.

The latest fragment adds to the Ness’ pitchstone assemblage, bringing the total (if my ailing memory is correct) to 48 – the largest found in Orkney to date. The Barnhouse settlement yielded 26 pieces.

A study by Dr Hugo Anderson Whymark, of the National Museums Scotland, suggested the previous examples of Ness pitchstone may have been brought to Orkney by visitors, who used it to create tools in Structure Eight.

The location of today’s fragments suggests pitchstone use, and perhaps working, may have also occurred before the construction of Eight.

A lithics expert, Hugo noted that the blade reduction employed with the pitchstone was not characteristic of Late Neolithic flintworking in Orkney and that the raw material was brought by someone with the knowledge to work it.

We’ll conclude this brief report on what was an extremely busy day with Trench J and Structure Five. There, work on the floor deposits continued apace will the preparation of its huge, rectangular hearth for archaeomagnetic dating was completed.

For those wondering why we’ve yet to mention Trench T and Structure Twenty-Seven, the reason is simple. Excavation over at the south-eastern edge of the site will resume with the trench’s supervisor, Cristina, arrives back in Orkney shortly.

Hopefully after that the enigmatic Twenty-Seven will start revealing more of its secrets…

We’ll be back tomorrow with more news. See you then.