East Kirk of St Nicholas dig 26th to 36th June - Week 22
Judith Stones, Keeper of Archaeology, writes..
As the site gets deeper, and we move further back through time, discoveries seem to be coming ever faster. Earlier this week, while I was on the phone to Alison Cameron, Assistant Archaeologist and dig Director, there was an excited shout in the background to say that another burial had been found in a split log ‘coffin’. You may remember my mentioning one of those a couple of weeks ago – the burial of a 6 to 8 year old child. In that case, part of the ‘coffin’ had been burned, and samples have been sent to the SERC lab in East Kilbride for radio-carbon dating. In this second case, however, the ‘coffin’ as a whole was much better preserved. I hope you can get from the photo an impression of the shape of it, hollowed out of half a log. We’re taking advice from Margot Wright from the Conservation Lab at Marischal Museum as to whether or not it will be possible to lift at least part of it intact.
Last week I showed you the area at the extreme west end of the site, near the downstairs viewing window, where there is a curved stone ‘apse’- like feature and a number of burials outside it, of babies and young children. When I last reported there were, I think, seven burials there – but there are now 13, of which the oldest individual is only a teenager. Several of the bodies had been interred with stones carefully inserted to support the head and, in some cases the feet, but one, seen in the next photo, had had a little stone box or cist constructed for it.
We’ll have a better idea of the dates of these remains when we get the results from the radio-carbon lab. Last week we thought that they might be pre-12th century, or even early Christian in date, but one of the earliest, seen to the rear of the next picture, was in a ‘cist’ made out of pieces of stone (granite and possibly marble) which had been mortared together – a practice we tend to associated more with slightly later, medieval burials.
Actually the next photo shows quite a complex situation. The skeleton in the foreground has been interred later than the one in the stone ‘cist’, which the gravediggers must have come upon while preparing for that second burial. They seem then to have removed the lid of the ‘cist’. We know that there was a lid, because parts of it can be seen still in place at the feet of the skeleton., where, because of the angle of gravedigging, it was not in any sense in the way.
At the top left of the same picture, above the ‘cist’ and to left of some large stones, is a dark grey soil layer which contains a lot of animal bone. It may have been brought into the site to level up ground within the burial area. At any rate, the grey soil lay over the ‘cist’, while the burial in the foreground was cut through the soil - that’s another way in which we can deduce which came first. Immediately above the grey soil, and visible in the next picture, is an area of ash and charcoal containing a large number of fish bones, which show up as orangey-brown shapes in the photo. There are some particularly big vertebrae among the bones, which may be from cod or ling. We know from our excavations elsewhere in Aberdeen that the specimens eaten in the medieval burgh tended to be sizeable, probably as the result of a selective fishing strategy.
Meanwhile, at the other end of the site, a series of floors are being excavated, probably belonging to the 12th century church. In the photo, you can see a slightly higgledy-piggledy cobbled surface, which is the latest, or most recent in date of them. Behind is the wall that may have formed the east end of the church at that period.
For further information, please contact (1224) 523658 or judiths@aberdeencity.gov.uk
