East Kirk of St Nicholas dig 12th to 16th June - Week 20
Judith Stones, Keeper of Archaeology, writes…
We’d like to thank all those who came to the open day last Saturday – I think there were about 200 or so people who visited and joined tours, despite competition from the World Cup and Aberdeen’s Military Show.
I’m also very grateful to our web team for making this diary more easily accessible again after its long sojourn on the news pages while Aberdeen City Council’s web site was being refurbished. And thanks to our colleagues in Publicity for keeping us up there with the news so we didn’t have to disappear completely when the web site was out of action. I’d love to have your comments on the dig – my contact details are at the bottom of this page.
This week has been one of floors, intriguing coffins, fascinating stones, pilgrims and a lost heart.
There have been medieval mortar floor surfaces springing up all over the place. Some of them don’t seem to make any sense in relation to what we thought we were beginning to understand of the 12th century and later choir and east end of St Nicholas Church – but that’s what archaeology is like. By next week we hope to have a better idea of what’s going on. Meanwhile, demolition of the sleeper walls, which supported the weight of the 15th century roof, has begun. That’s going to be major enterprise. Once that is done, the entire site will look very much deeper and wider and will be less of a maze to negotiate – at the moment the sleeper walls divide it into three very distinct parts.
A week or so ago, I mentioned that Dr Richard Fawcett, of Historic Scotland, is going to identify and write a report on the numerous pieces of carved and decorated stone which have been found. The array of stones awaiting his expert eye continues to expand, including one moulded sandstone which we think derives from a doorway, seen in the first photo still embedded in the later 15th century column base in which it was re-used.
On Saturday’s open day, one grave in particular was clearly visible through the ground floor viewing window. It was very unusual because the 6 to 8 year old child had been buried not in a built coffin, but in what looked like a split log, which had been burnt around the end where the child’s head lay. The grave had been cut through a pebbled surface, which sloped down towards the east, following the natural topography of the site. It seems very possible that this burial is earlier than the 12th century church. On Monday a sample of the burnt wood (seen in the foreground of the photo) was sent to the SERC lab at East Kilbride – and we hope to have a radio-carbon date from them by early August. We await that very excitedly!
Within Drum’s Aisle, where visitors enter the church, there’s a small display case with objects found on the dig. Part of the exhibition changes every week or two to accommodate what the digging team consider to be the ‘find of the week’. At present that find is a very interesting decorated bone object, seen here in a drawing by Jan Dunbar, one of the Archaeological Unit’s illustrators. We’re not sure yet what it is, because it’s broken, but have made a few suggestions in the display, so you might like to go along and see what you think. In the next couple of weeks, depending on their condition, we may be able to show off two very exciting finds made at the very end of last week. One, seen in the next photo, is a silvered heart-shaped brooch which was found lying on the ribs of a skeleton, just above where the heart would have been. The other is a pewter religious or ‘pilgrim’ badge. The badge is being drawn at the moment, so I’ll be able to show it to you soon, but it seems to depict the Virgin Mary with the body of the dead Christ over her knees – the kind of image which is seen on a very much grander scale in Michelangelo’s magnificent Pieta in St Peter’s in Rome.
For further information or comments, please contact judiths@aberdeencity.gov.uk or Tel 01224 523658.
