Racing to the finish..

We'll be finishing up work this week on site.  The mad rush of finishing features and recording them is well under way (with the joy of backfilling looming large in the near future). 


The inner ditch sondage has been completed - almost single-handedly by Irving with some help from Jasmin.  The sections tell us a story about how they attempted to stabilise the ditch with layers of turf as it filled in. 


Work in the outer ditch sondages progressed rapidly in both trench 1 and 2.  Yesterday a massive dump of metalworking waste was uncovered in trench 2 quite far down in the ditch.  Over 100 fragments of clay moulds were uncovered and many of these were of exceptional quality. We are sitting now with torches and magnifying glass trying to get to grips with the range of objects that were made. Trench 1 also continued to produce finds of metalworking moulds and crucibles.


One of the real highlights today and of the entire dig has nothing to do with artefacts.  Today the puzzle of how they constructed the outer palisade/wall walk type structure was revealed.  At the base of a very deep thin trench we found the ghosts of planks and posts preserved more clearly than ever before.

The grey shadows of squared planks set at the edge of the palisade with large posts set behind.

We have been puzzling over the palisade construction for years.  The sheer scale of the size of construction and the skill and effort taken in making the wooden planks and posts for this structure is astounding. 


We only have one full day in the field left, but we are extremely satisfied with our work this year - so many great successes and a lot of 'firsts' for Pictish archaeology. 

2016 Season begins!

We are well into cleaning the trenches and revealing our familiar features as well as some tantalising new features.  The inner and outer ditches look great as does the palisade and the ring of palisade postholes.  We have one small sherd of Late Roman Amphora so far from cleaning. 


The students and volunteers not to mention the staff are looking forward to the next few weeks of back breaking labour, banter and careful trowelling.  Rhynie Woman is providing the best lunches for us EVER (ah, the cakes!).


Most of us are heading to the Prize Bingo tonight and there will be tours tomorrow during Rhynie Gala. Meet near the Gala tents in the village during the afternoon!

Drone shot of our trenches 2016.

Beginning to dig into features

Before the update... a beauty shot from Oskar's drone. A few days old but gives you the idea!

Hopefully you can see the annexe to the main triple enclosure ( and look at those lovely palisade postholes inside the palisade slot...).

Today was very productive with most of the site now having gone through its first trowel clean.  Lots more features emerging including arcs of postholes within the annexe.   Nothing forming definite structures as of yet, but we will know more when the plan is finalised and we can get a good overview. We are beginning to look into some of our key features to answer some big questions. Over the inner ditch we are attempting to confirm its phasing and find material in the lower fills for dating.  With the outer ditch we have to tease out its relationship to the annexe.

Morale is good after yesterday's rain.  Gordon stuck a bucket on his head, we ate cake and far too many strawberry laces and had our first head-scratcher finds.  One of these is a little stack of 4 coins - they don't look particularly old (alas!) at initial viewing, which came out of the topsoil.  Likely the contents of someone's pocket a few generations back.  The other was a lovely piece of pottery - a pedestal type base with fluted edges or finger notches.  We are not familiar with this (so have sent photos to the findsmaster).  It doesn't look like our imported pottery.

- Meggen

REAP Update

We may not be digging, but there is a lot of furious activity going on inside these days.  Gordon has been 'washing cremated bone' (he does need a hobby....) from the site.  Provisional identifications suggest it is actually animal bone.  It is much more intensely fired than just normal burnt animal bone for cooking, so this adds an interesting puzzle to the mix.  We found burnt bone in almost every feature at Rhynie, so it is pretty important for us to figure out what it was doing there and what date it is.  Hopefully we have enough to secure a few radiocarbon dates to help us with the puzzle.
Meggen is off to Cardiff on Thursday to present Rhynie at the Cardiff Archaeology Research Seminars (http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/share/newsandevents/events/archaeology/cardiff-archaeology-research-seminars-2012-to-2013.html).

There was a little disappointment over the past month, too.  Gordon did some fieldwork at another site in Aberdeenshire with a palisaded enclosure with a timber hall inside (visible in an AP).  We had thought this might be a good parallel to Rhynie - until Gordon found post-medieval pottery at the bottom of the palisade trench! So an interesting addition to post-medieval rural archaeology, but it means Rhynie still stands out as one very unique Pictish place!