Contemporary sewers occasionally run through old quarters. In a regular improvement of a district near Windhill, near Muir of Ord, in the Scottish Highlands, a thin slice was slit into an ancient landscape that had been visited, deserted, revisited, and recalled over thousands of years.
The burial ground dated to the 6th Century burial ground was found by investigators in a trench excavation of new pipework, and the remains of two Iron Age roundhouses dating to possibly 3,000 years old. Stone tools, features of industry associated with metalworking, and a wall material that can hardly be preserved with any form of ornament, were also found on the same piece of ground.
The archaeologist Steven Birch of West Coast Archaeological Services has explained how the excavations revealed craft activity and also domestic life. The two smelting furnaces and a smaller [blacksmiths] hearth were fairly well maintained and on the digs I managed to uncover a lot of detail concerning the construction and operation of the furnaces, said he. It seems that the furnaces were located outside the roundhouses, which made sense according to Scottish Water, since, as it observed, the furnaces would have generated much heat and fumes, so could not be placed inside a small area. Post holes, shallow arcs of which gave hints of temporary, ancillary buildings which at one time covered this hot, smoky work, but which kept it apart, as it were, and the places of abodes.
Then came this which transformed a sound archaeological find into a thoroughly peculiar one: clay daub, the mud plaster stamped against woven wooden walls. Others were adorned with chevron, which is an intentional ornamental surface, and not an unintentional construction. Birch pointed out the rarity: I can testify that such decoration is extremely uncommon, and this is the first in Scotland, and probably in the U.K., though further investigation is necessary on this point.
The absences had a meaning as well. The roundhouse circumstances yielded no pottery, a fact that carries the opinion that a group of communities in this region did not use clay pots but instead wooden vessels and their tool collections were dominated by stone. It contained remains of rotary querns with which to grind, and a quern rubber and a hammerstone lazy objects worn down by use and habit. Charcoal and burnt plant remains were also recovered by environmental sampling, such as a type of grain, which was dated to be six-rowed barley, a type of crop that fulfills the daily meals once again into the narrative of the site.
The evidence on the burial was weaker. The soils were very acidic, so the bones did not survive, but some fragments were left, and one of the burials came in a log coffin, which was most visible as a stain in the soil with a few fragments of the head. there were no grave goods, which was characteristic of graves of this age in Scotland, as being contrary to the richly-equipped Anglo-Saxon graves of this age in England, said Birch.
There were three round barrows across the trench, approximately 10 metres in diameter, which augmented the feeling that Windhill was not just one moment in time, but rather the place to go back to to settle, work, and to remember. Archeologists have sought radiocarbon dating, isotope and DNA testing to narrow the time frame and get to know more about the individuals behind the traces.
To an engineering team, this is a procedural lesson as well as a historical lesson: ground work that seems to be culturally significant can be discovered by chance. The construction advice on “chance find” cases always points out the first aid of just stopping, covering up what has been revealed and introducing the necessary experts, since what appears to be dirt and rock can also be a unique account of human existence.
