By Fenn Woodhouse

Our aim this week was to define the suspected roundhouse wall further and investigate the structure of the rampart by removing as much rubble as possible before starting to fill the trench back in at the close of the project. At the start of the week, students used a combination of mattocks and trowels to remove rubble and define the inner wall, and to try to find the base of the wall. The shape of the wall became more unclear, however, as the rubble was cleared to reveal the stones in a slightly different shape than expected.

After Tuesday saw a disruption in digging due to extreme winds, we returned to remove the remaining rubble, promisingly finding more soil underneath, rather than bedrock as expected. On closer inspection of the wall, we had to consider the possibility that our wall was not actually a roundhouse wall, as the wall takes a wider arc than would be possible for a roundhouse to be built in that location, and missing stones in crucial places created a vaguer picture than previously thought. A sondage was dug through the wall to attempt to find where it ends and the abutting rampart wall starts, as the way the walls fell and the rubble covered it made it unclear.

Towards the end of the week, students learned various recording techniques such as GPS, photogrammetry and scale drawing, in order to accurately capture the information found before starting to backfill the trench over the last two days. Over the week, we found course stone tools possibly used for smoothing hides, many fragments of animal bones in various sizes, and a rock with grooves suggesting it may have been used for sharpening a bone needle.