Sanday excavation reports launched
By Sigurd Towrie
Article date: Monday, September 10, 2007

For a number of years in the 1980s, Sanday was the centre of archaeological attention in Orkney as experts descended on two separate sites on the island.

The excavation at Pool, on the island’s west side, began in 1983, brought about by the ever-present threat of coastal erosion. Two years later another group moved in on Toftsness, in the far north-east.

Both excavations ran until 1988 and over time revealed an unparalleled view of life in Orkney – from prehistoric times through to the late Norse period.

The reports for both digs were launched in Orkney in September, and here I provide a brief overview of the books, and the excavations.

(Excavations in Sanday, Orkney, Volume 1)
Excavations at Pool, Sanday: A multi-period settlement from Neolithic to Late Norse times

The first volume in the new Investigations in Sanday, Orkney series, detailing the excavations at Pool, which uncovered a huge sequence of building, spanning from the middle of the fourth millennium BC to the Norse period of the later 12th century AD.

The Pool dig, led by John Hunter, Professor of Ancient History and Archaeology in the Institute of Archaeology and Antiquity, University of Birmingham, uncovered a huge sequence of building, spanning the middle of the fourth millennium BC to the Norse period of the later 12th century AD.

This huge period of settlement allowed the archaeologists to piece together a picture of how life in the area changed over time, and with it a long-term change in subsistence, as new crops and new animals are added. But despite the changes, there is a striking continuity in the basic way of life that lasted over almost five millennia.

At its earliest levels, substantial Neolithic stone-built structures represented a permanent settlement, housing perhaps more than one family group and using both the Grooved Ware and Unstan Ware styles of prehistoric pottery.

Over time, the Neolithic remains were absorbed into an Iron Age village – the latest building as a core structural unit that survived through into the Viking period. From this period, the outstanding finds included a carved Pictish symbol stone and an ogham inscription.

What is particularly interesting about the Pool excavation is that it shows a Norse arrival in Orkney significantly before the traditional viking dates.

Speaking at the launch of the book in Kirkwall, Professor Hunter said: "At Pool we've got some form of Viking contact before the accepted 'Viking Age'"

The excavation showed that in the late 8th century, or early 9th, the Norse had settled at Pool. At this time, the settlement had dwindled in size, but had still not been completely abandoned. There, it appears that a native population survived alongside the Norse incomers until sometime in the 10th or 11th century, when the distinction became less obvious.

(Excavations in Sanday, Orkney, Volume 2)
Tofts Ness, Sanday: An island landscape through three thousand years of prehistory

Meanwhile, on the peninsula of Toftsness, Stephen Dockrill, from the University of Bradford, had started work on the numerous mounds and banks that cover the landscape.

Using a combination of selective excavation and geophysical survey, Steve’s team revealed a domestic and funerary landscape – the settlement spanning the Neolithic through to the early Iron Age.

Unlike their contemporaries at Pool, the Neolithic inhabitants of Toftsness appear not to have used either Grooved Ware or Unstan Ware, and this led to the suggestion that this reflects a lack of status compared to the settlement at Pool.

Instead, the Toftsness pottery shares important links to contemporary assemblages from West Mainland Shetland, something echoed by the discovery of steatite, or soapstone.

The upper levels of the main settlement mound contained the remains of stone-built roundhouses of the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age, of which the last survived to a height of 1.5m. A lack of personal items amongst the artefact assemblage again suggests the low social status of the inhabitants.

The economic evidence for all periods shows a mixed subsistence economy based on animal husbandry and barley cultivation, together with fishing, fowling and the exploitation of wild plants, both terrestrial and marine.

Pool and Toftsness turned out to be two very important sites that despite having similarities also exhibited marked differences. The beauty of the two excavations was that they both shared the same recording and sampling systems, using the same specialists.

This provided data that could be reliably compared between each site to provide an unparalleled view of cultural and economic development in the island.