Dig Diary – bone in drain could produce a date for Structure Twenty-Seven
Day Forty-One
Thursday, August 15, 2024
We’ve got it! We hope.
Since the 2024 season started back in June, we’ve explained to many hundreds of visitors that one of the goals for Structure Twenty-Seven was to secure a date for the building’s construction/use.
As regular readers and site visitors will know, although Twenty-Seven is undoubtedly the finest building on site, we don’t have a date for it, so its place in the site’s long biography is not clear.
To date it required finding something organic in a secure position/location that could be radiocarbon dated.
And today we found it. And it probably couldn’t be better.
It was a substantial cattle bone wedged under part of a newly discovered stone-lined drain outside Twenty-Seven’s north-western corner. Its position means the scapula must either have fallen in before the stone-capping was placed on top, or was washed in later, and stuck, during the building’s use.
Either way, if we can get a radiocarbon date from the bone it will either give us an indication as to when building work began on Structure Twenty-Seven or a period when it was in use. We wait with bated breath!
Now on to today’s most surprising find – a child’s milk tooth from one of the orthostatic boxes in Structure Thirty-Four.
We’ve found teeth at the Ness before – well, three.
An adult incisor in the midden/demolition deposits in Structure Ten was found in 2012, while, in 2014, two adult teeth were found within the Iron Age remodelling of the Trench T midden mound. These, however, don’t necessarily relate to the handling of human remains or the dead. Teeth can fall out – or be knocked out!
While today’s molar could indicate children were present on site, it’s equally possible that the tooth was in the midden brought in to infill the structure.
Thirty-Four’s orthostatic boxes produced animal bone and pottery earlier in the season.
Elsewhere much of the day was again spent cleaning across the site, ahead of another photographic session in the afternoon.
During this process, Willamette student Theo uncovered a remarkable flint artefact outside Structure Twenty-One.
It’s something we’d not encountered before – long and thin, the artefact had been clearly ground/polished into shape, with a point that broken off at some point in its history. At the other end, a clear break shows the artefact was once part of a larger piece.
What was it? To be honest we’re not sure yet. So we’ve taken to calling it a “chisel” in the meantime.
We’ll end today’s brief diary in Structure Five, where, as well as a major pre-photography clean-up, the Trench J team continued to unearth evidence of earlier activity beneath the building.
As well as a series of features at the south end, in the northern extension we have a scoop hearth lying directly beneath Five’s original end wall. The possibility of an earlier building – timber? – preceding the construction of Five is looking very likely now, although it is not clear yet of the form it took.
Tomorrow is the last day of fieldwork at the Ness and the last day the site is open to the public. For those in the trenches, it will be a case of planning, photographing and paperwork, with most of the excavation work all but completed.
We’ll be back tomorrow for the final dig diary ever (but fear not, the website continues) so will see you then.
