A fine day (and a visit from Fred)

Thankfully today was a lot less wet meaning everyone's spirits were improved.  Up on Wheedlemont, however, reports are that the work is a bit hard-going with some pretty tough ground lying underneath the turf.  Exciting glimpses of structures within the hillfort at Tap o'Noth are also emerging.

Down in the village we managed a good day's work despite the lure of Rhynie Woman's pop up cafe (cinnamon buns!).

Hard work was rewarded with some lovely ditch fills and a lunchtime visit from Fred.

As we moved into the fills, finds also emerged.  Irving hit the pottery jackpot with some lovely big sherds of what looks like Late Roman Amphora (5th - 6th c AD) as well as crucible fragments for melting non-ferrous metals such as bronze.

Sherds of probably LRA found today.

A few more fragments of clay moulds used for casting pins also emerged.  So our evidence for fine metalworking continues to grow.

Sieving action!

Our Open Day should be this coming Saturday (weather permitting) and there are activities ongoing in the village this week (see Rhynie Woman's facebook page for more info).

Not a bad view from the office - I can wave to the crew on Tap o'Noth.

Pretty little moulds all in a row

An early morning post before we head out for the day.  Remember, if you are visiting site today we will be very busy trying to wrap everything up, but we will try to stop for a chat.

Just a selection of finds from the past few days drying out.

Hard to believe we are almost done.  What an amazing season.  We'll update about our post-ex progress and especially about some of these magical moulds once they have been cleaned and analysed.  We are hoping some are complete enough to have 3D scanned and then 3D printed so we can try casting our own Pictish metalwork!

Mini-Diggers on Site

Today we had the rest of Rhynie Primary with us on site.  They did a great job trowelling in Trench 5 and sieving for treasures. 


Despite gloomy forecasts we didn't get more than a few drops of rain today.  Perfect digging weather!


The outer ditch continues to provide us with lots of metalworking evidence including today another fragment of a stone crucible stand or mortar with some possible red enamel and copper alloy stuck to it.  We had some great mould fragments for pins, too.

Digging the outer ditch in the shadow of Tap o'Noth.

In Trench 4, work on one of the palisade postholes revealed a cache of unburnt bone (cattle) in the post-pipe.  We had  a similar cache of bone in another palisade posthole in 2012 - and that feature had a lovely brooch mould at the bottom.  We await this posthole's excavation with anticipation!






Lifting the animal bone in a palisade posthole.

And just in case you thought we were all business this year.... Here is Dan modelling Oskar's solution to trample in our nice clean trenches.

Update: Crucible Kings and Pin Princessess

Rhynie 2016 is well under way and we had our first visit from Rhynie Primary today. Our two teams - 'The Archaeologists' and 'The Picts' - did a bit of detective work with aerial photography, got a first hand look at the amazing finds we have on site so far and got their hands dirty in Trench 5 doing a bit of trowelling back and sieving.  Wouldn't you know it they found TWO flint flakes in the topsoil?!? Those keen young eyes...


The big developments over the past few days have been the number and quality of finds.  Since we started excavating features, the finds have been popping up all over the place.


Highlights include numerous crucible sherds - largely found by Curtis and Lewis in the outer ditch.  Crucibles are small clay pots used to melt precious metals like bronze for making items such as pins and brooches in the Pictish period.  To complement all those sherds we have a potential crucible stand and a growing number of moulds for pins and other objects.

Possible stone crucible stand.

Not to be overshadowed by the lads in the outer ditch, Vicky became our first pin princess by finding a lovely fragment of a copper alloy pin.  The pin looks purposefully bent or broken and is reminiscent of a bent nail-headed pin from the site. 


A few sherds of amphorae have also emerged, but this year the focus really seems to be on metalworking debris (at least so far!).


The big find of the day was also the most delicate - a lovely rim of a glass drinking vessel. Roland (looking unimpressed apparently) was heading towards Gordon with glass in hand when Dr GN started the dance of joy - Daniel said it made his year! This adds to our small but important collection of fine glass drinking vessels. 


We should be having an open day on Sunday this weekend so keep your eyes posted on the blog and the Northern Picts facebook page (for those that do that sort of thing!).

Crucibles!

Ewan has sent a great photograph which highlights even more metalworking evidence from the site.  These sherds of crucibles (little clay vessels for melting material like copper) were found in the destruction material from the outer ditch.  Mike B's eagle eye picked them out, as fresh from the ground they looked like bits of burnt stone.  Meggen's talk at the Chester Archaeological Society went well the other night - lots of people seem to now be planning to visit The Craw Stane on their holidays!