A bit of 'Rhynie Curse' and a great big ditch

All trenches continue with great gusto despite a visit from the 'Rhynie Curse' which this year has shown itself in:
1 case of 'poison finger'
1 incident of Land Rover grounding
1 incident of said Land Rover bursting a tire
1 case of chicken pox
many incidents of sore muscles and for some reason sore heids amongst some of the team...

Who knew you could drink a G&T from an amphora?!?

Updates from the hillforts are pending as I await some photographs and text from the teams up there (they aren't stuck up there, just too exhausted to blog).

By the Craw Stane things are moving well.

A selection of finds - look at that sherd of amphora - as big as yer face!

We continue to find evidence of non-ferrous metalworking and the high-life led by the inhabitants.  Some of the most exciting finds this year are 3 tiny sherds of glass, which are from imported Continental drinking vessels.  We are also continuing to find sherds of a blackish pottery, probably hand-made; we found a few fragments of this last year, too.  This pottery could be very important as traditionally the Picts are aceramic (despite knowing all the technology perfectly well as evidenced by the ceramic crucible sherds).

We've spend the last few days concentrating on the story of the outer ditch - and what a ditch it is!

Ditch fills looking fab.

We still have not definitively bottomed the outer ditch (but are close we think).  We are stopping now to do some recording to ensure the safety of the team and to enable us to remove at least the upper layers of the baulk soon.  We have what looks like a cut (possibly for a drain as there was stone as a type of potential 'lining,' but as the soil drains very well here this seems a little unnecessary even in the ditch).  This is at the bottom of the ditch and potentially represents a recutting event, which we should be able to confirm once we can continue excavating down in more safety.

Other exposed areas of the ditch are still in middle fill levels, but we are seeing some features including a few shallow pits of unknown purpose.  The larger pit we suspect might be an event related to digging out sand, perhaps for metalworking-related activities.  We are in the final week now.  Weather will hopefully hold out, although the wind is picking up and so is the sand down at the Craw Stane trench (next stop for the 'curse' is probably conjunctivitis...).  I might be a bit sad to leave my office (below) - but perhaps I can set up a similar situation at Chester inside my own office.

A bru and a bucket - what more does an office need?

Soggy but good

A rather wet day today after blistering sunshine (literally for one of the diggers! Wear sunscreen!) yesterday. We only managed the morning before the rain drove us off site. But things are progressing well and the community talk delivered by Cathy went well last night. (Big shout out to Cathy for that one as Dr GN was still recovering from his eye injury and DR MG had to be on mum duty).
Most of the trench has had a good trowel now and lots of features are emerging. The annexe is well defined apart from one edge, which looks much better from the air than on the ground. We believe we have the entrance to it, which seems to have some 'horns' or extensions coming off of it. There also appear to be a number of interesting things going on inside it and a complex relationship between it and the main fortification features (inner and outer ditches and the palisade) of the main complex. Some fun teasing out of phasing to be done there. Our palisade appears to have an entrance augmented by some impressive architecture as we have large post holes and another slot feature on one side of it. This is great news as one of our objectives this year is to try and get a bit more information on how the different fortifications were built and what they may have looked like. A great start to the week and the weather looks like it will take a good turn for the next few days. At least we should not have a dry dusty trench tomorrow.

Some technical difficulties at the minute means I cannot post Oskar's latest drone photo, but we are working on it!
-Meggen

Puzzle solved at least: Day Four

Day 4 proved sunny (too hot for some) and although conditions were dry and dusty, it was still a good day for picking out features during the planning sessions.  Our 'jigsaw' effect on the site also was solved - as the site dried out more, we could see that the difference in drying wasn't because of a natural change in the soil, but that the area was really really thick with archaeological features! As the soil dried more, the shapes of pits and possible ring ditches emerged more clearly.  We have a very busy trench...

Our small team of female archaeologists-in-training from Aberdeen University are doing an amazing job.  They have produced some of the best plans I've seen in a long time, especially for a first attempt!  We feel very lucky they are with us and willing to work so hard.

Thankfully we also had more volunteers show up today on site  - Amanda and Jenna stayed for the whole day and sorted out the entrance area to the big enclosure.  Fred got his hands dirty, too, helping trowel back to clean in advance of planning.  Later in the day, we had a few local Rhynie folk - Jake and his friend (whose name we didn't catch, sorry!) came by and trowelled up a storm -  hopefully to return to help us out again. They even found our star find of the day - a fantastic glass droplet.  This would most likely have been formed during glass-making or glass-working - perhaps for a bead or something similar.  We cannot be sure of a date at the moment, but have Ewan and others on the case. 

The clear glass droplet found on site today.

Today was great for visitors, too, both from Rhynie and further afield.  Mabel, who used to own the field we are working in, came by for a chat and brought us some lovely chocolates. Fred might just have some competition for 'best visitor' this year.

We can't say how much it means to us to have the village behind us and to have folks coming by for a look, asking us questions and getting excited about the dig and what it can tell us about Rhynie's past.  It really makes our work worthwhile.