Thursday, July 30, 2009
(Previous entries available here)

Day nine and this is Natalia Bain here to tell you about my exciting day of cleaning and everyone else’s discoveries.

I’m a local girl but am currently in third year at Glasgow University doing single honours archaeology. I’m gutted because tomorrow is my last day at the Ness of Brodgar before I rush off to my fieldschool at Fortieviot. 

Today I have been cleaning around structure eight, looking at context changes and getting ready to photograph the structure. 

Structure 10 from the camera mast.

It hasn’t really been a day of discovery for most of us as the wind has made cleaning very difficult and time consuming. Mike and Claire have had an amazing day though, having lifted out a massive pot in the morning and making the find of the day in the shape of a large (and very impressive) wall face facing the outer wall of Structure 10. Mike is currently musing about how similar it is to the enclosure wall around the large structure at Barnhouse, but the gap here is slightly smaller.

Mikael excavating the robbed out north-western corner of Structure 10.

Although Nick seemed to be in despair about the elusive (mainly robbed out it seems) walls of Structure 10 it now all seems to be making sense – at least to him. Much like Structure 8 at Barnhouse, the inner wall of Structure 10 seems to consist of two parallel double faced walls with a midden or turf core between them. The outermost face, however, is stepped with the lower courses protruding out from those courses above. And as mentioned above the whole building seems contained within an outer enclosure.

Christa excavating some articulated bone.

Elsewhere, Christa found articulated cattle bone in the bone deposit against Structure Ten. Graham discovered some more linear rock art, this time around Structure Eight and on the edge of the rock. Not to be outdone Jonny, also found another fine example of a polished stone axe while cleaning the internal collapse of Structure 10. 

Thanks to everyone who is visiting the site and I encourage anyone who hasn’t to try and come, it’s an amazing site. Remember to watch us on Reporting Scotland tomorrow night on BBC Scotland, from 6.30pm.

Revealing the outer wall face of Structure 10 and the inner face of its enclosure.