New photo gallery online see the diggers

The remote survey team has now arrived so work has started on doing a Geophysical survey of the rest of the site that has not as yet been opened up.

 

	The day proceeded as normal with work continuing on the post holes some of which are now getting quite deep and must have originally been quite substantial.
After the appearence of the article in the Scotsman the number of visitors to the sight has increased and we are thinking of putting up some information boards.
	The day carried on as normal, more recording, trowelling, brushing etc until we heard a "Gosh" "Oh my" and a "my word" drift up from the hole Julian was working in. This soon gathered everbodys attention.
Julian had uncovered some cremated bones possibly human - see Julians piece.

   We've now had three days of excavating features, after all that scraping and brushing the subsoil, and planning the revealed surface. So far, the post holes of the palisade enclosure are quite varied, in terms of their depth and filling. However, in most cases the posts seem to have been withdrawn: we don't have much evidence of posts which have rotted out in situ, or which have been burnt out. Mostly, there's a packing of clean gravel in the base of each post hole, and above this a mass of gravel and soily material tipping in toward the centre of the feature, sometimes with a clearer indication of where the post has been, at the very bottom. At the top, there's generally a layer of silting.
   As I mentioned earlier, there are indications that the posts of the enclosure have been replaced at least once. Individual posts appear to be duplicated, and we now have a couple of instances of post holes that cut into other, earlier potholes. So there is clearly a sequence, which I'll have to try to sort out once we've finished digging. One of the best clues is that some of the holes are only 40 cm or so deep, while others are as much as two metres. As the gravel surface has lost quite a lot to erosion since Neolithic times, these latter must have held monster posts - it's generally imagined that a post will stand about three times as high above ground as the depth of the hole that it stands in. What this suggests is that in different phases of construction, the palisade may have stood to a different height.
   We're also starting to excavate some of the smaller holes which are in amongst the post holes. These may have held smaller posts, which retained horizontal planks which stretched between the main posts, giving a continuous palisade, as I mentioned in my last missive.
   We now have an assemblage of about 90 sherds of Impressed Ware - the Scottish/North English equivalent of Peterborough Ware, which dates to the middle-to-late Neolithic. The same style of pottery was found at the palisaded enclosure at Meldon Bridge, Peebles. The material which we have is very similar to that which Trevor Cowie excavated at Tors Warren, on Luce Sands, immediately toward the coast from our site (see Helen's contribution for more on this).
   Today's great find was a mass of cremated bone (possibly human), inside one of the large post holes. I've got to check the stratigraphy, but it seems to me that the cremation was inserted into the hole immediately after the post was withdrawn, and before the resulting hole was backfilled. This is rather similar to other Neolithic timber structures (Dorchester on Thames, for instance), where cremations were inserted into post voids.

 Julian Thomas

 The cremated bones awaiting the next step which is to block lift them