2012 Ardnamurchan Transitions Dig - 1

The Ardnamurchan Transitions team finished their summer season at Swordle last week.  It's been another good year for them, with lots of exciting finds, if not anything quite as spectacular as last year's Viking ship burial.

They excavated in two main areas.  The first, shown above, is at the southern end of the wall that surrounds Swordle Farm, just beside the road to Ockle.  The remains of a number of stone buildings are visible there: they excavated two, both of which were part of the clachan of Swordle Huel, which was cleared during the 19th century by the then owner of Ardnamurchan Estate.

Site 1.  This picture shows the building nearer the road.  At top right is a fireplace set into the wall of the clachan building, which extends away from the observer.  The remains of a second, curved wall, of an earlier building lying underneath, are visible in the centre of the picture.  This could date back to the 17th or 18th centuries.  The line of small rocks running out from the end of the building is a mystery, though the soil to the right is quite different from the soil to the left.

Site 2.  This building is also in two phases.  The one on top, again, is a Swordle Huel 19th century building, but the building beneath, which has rounded ends, is earlier than the earlier Site 1 structure.  This suggests that Swordle Huel has a long history of settlement.

Within the Site 2 structure there is a cow burial.  Although this was carefully excavated, there is no suggestion that it particularly old.

Site 3 was further to the west, on the edge of the sown field.  The excavation to upper right in the picture was prompted by the discovery, during a field survey in 2010, of bones which suggested a cremation, and a thumbnail scraper dating to the Bronze Age.  This year's dig found human remains at the site of the cremation with another scraper amongst them, showing that the cremation was Bronze Age.  It also found post holes.  These finds are tentatively dated to the middle Bronze Age - other Bronze Age finds nearer the Bay are earlier.

The excavation in the foreground of the picture cut across a circular feature, some 18 metres in diameter, found during an earlier  geophysical survey.  This turned out to be a ditch, later infilled.  Into this, post holes had been sunk.

All the sites showed great promise, so the team hopes in later visits to open them on a larger scale.

The Ardnamurchan Transitions website is here.