Sorry for the delay, the usb stick went missing!

Today was windy (the first day so far I’ve had to wear a jumper in fact). We went further down in removing the rubble from structure A, uncovering occupation layers where we may be stopping for the year to avoid losing information in plan.

After a short while of removing rubble Michael and I returned to the structure E hearth where we reached the bottom of our cross section, finally moving past the colourful ash deposits to the clay below and discovering the bottom of the side stone creating the structure of the feature. This is now ready for drawing and recording tomorrow before we begin to remove the soil from the other side down to the peat ash deposits from which a specialist will remove samples for archaeo-magnetic dating. All very exciting!!

Head south from St Margaret’s Hope, take the Windwick turning (left at the postbox) and follow the road around towards the bay – you can’t miss it. We look forward to seeing you..

Unfortunately the weather had other plans but feel free to drop by over the next few days for a tour!

Cross section of ashy deposits to the East of the site.

Hello, I’m John.  I am here as a volunteer and today I am partnering Antonio while digging in tench K to the east of the site. This is a trench first opened in the early years of excavation at The Cairns but little studied since. Our first task was therefore to do a heavy clean but then the interesting bit began. The trench had an irregular hard grey layer overlying a orange brown silty matrix both of which contained significant amounts of charcoal. The grey layer seemed likely to be the result of severe heating of a matrix similar to that underlying it. The question arose as to whether the heating had occurred  in situ or were the layers caused by sequential deposits of material heated elsewhere.

Our approach was to section these matrices and examine the section for clues. There appeared to be a very sharp demarcation between the layers and the grey layer had an irregular shape with a few patches dispersed around the main deposit. Our conclusion – probably successive deposits of material generated elsewhere.

Thanks to Antonio’s willingness to discuss several of the finer points of this exercise which I would otherwise have missed, I came away from the day feeling that I had learnt a lot about the techniques for tackling a relatively complex problem. The whole experience of digging at The Cairns has/ is fascinating and I hope be able to follow developments ther both this year and into the future.

The entrance to Structure A, viewed from within the structure.

Hi there, my name is Marcia and I am a 2^nd year student of archaeology at The University of Aberdeen.  I am helping excavate at The Cairns as part of a 3^rd year course.  The experience so far has been amazing and I have really enjoyed myself.  The weather has been great which has helped.  I never would have thought I would be coming back from Orkney with a sun tan!  Today on site I have been carrying on from last week helping with the exaction of the interior of the broch.  After a hard week of moving stones and rubble we are nearing the Iron Age floor level.  Uprights and features have been emerging from the rubble and it has been getting really exciting.  I have been helping with the deconstruction of the later wall that had been built to close off the entrance of the broch.

The large stone slabs we uncovered today under the rubble in Structure A.

We have been photographing and recording the wall as it has slowly been removed.  It is unclear if this wall was built after or during the rubble infill of the interior.  As we removed the rubble an area of burning is apparent on the interior of the broch wall next to the entrance.  As the dig progresses things will perhaps become clearer.  Thank you to the site visitors today who very kindly arrived with a big box of doughnuts which were gratefully received by all.