Rhynie, Aberdeenshire

Rhynie, Aberdeenshire
The Craw Stane with Tap o'Noth hillfort in the background (Photo courtesy of Cathy MacIver).

Monday 7 April 2014

Some news from the Beverly Field excavation

We've had some preliminary information back from some of our specialists looking at our finds, environmental remains and our burial remains.

First off, it doesn't look like our very fine glass is distinctive enough to be classified as early medieval - Ewan is not willing to give us the thumbs up on that one.  But our two glass beads seem to still be in with a shot of an Iron Age - Early Med date.

Our environmental samples have been looked at and it seems like we've got quite a bit of hearth waste and not much burning of material in place.  We do have one pit (in the smaller square enclosure) that seems to be quite different, which unlike the others, had a large amount of only one type of charcoal from Scots Pine.  We've got lots of good stuff to provide us with radiocarbon dates, so this is our next step to see if we can't determine a timeline for all the different pits, postholes and possible buildings within our enclosures.

And finally, news on examination of our skeletal remains from the cist! Enough survived to determine that the burial is most likely to be a female.  So we might have found Rhynie Woman!