East Kirk of St Nicholas dig 17th to 21st July - Week 25
Judith Stones, Keeper of Archaeology, writes..
Some people reading this may have been to Santiago de Compostela, that enchanting medieval city (a UNESCO World Heritage site) in Galicia, in north-west Spain. Perhaps you’ve walked part of El Camino de Santiago ( The Way of St James) or, like me, arrived there indulgently in a car driven by someone else. Well, no sooner had I put my metaphorical pen down from writing last week’s piece, and wandered over to the site to do the usual Friday lunchtime tour, than Doreen Stewart, one of our volunteers, called me over to look at something she’d found. And I saw what you can see for yourselves in the next picture, a large half scallop shell sticking out of the ground.
Doreen had paid a visit a year ago to the Isle of May in the Firth of Forth, where she read about the discovery, in a 14th century grave at the Benedictine monastery there, of a half scallop shell in the mouth of the skeleton of a young man. When she started work at the St Nicholas dig she hoped very much that a scallop shell might be found there too, so she was, in her own words, ‘absolutely delighted’ to have uncovered this one it herself, especially as it was the first one ever found in Aberdeen. The scallop shell was well known in the medieval period as the symbol of pilgrimage to the shrine of St James the Apostle at Santiago de Compostela. Pilgrims wore them proudly attached to their hats or garments to show that they’d made that arduous journey – and Doreen’s one is pierced in four places to allow it to be worn in that way, as the next picture shows.
In the following photo, you can see both Doreen (in the blue top), who found the scallop shell, and the place, about half a metre behind her, where she discovered it.
That’s probably an area where people were buried when the wall foundation she’s standing on was the east wall of the church – I mean they were buried outside the church. It’s possible that the shell was disturbed from a grave there when the later wall (to Doreen’s right) was built. Last week I told the story of these two parallel walls, or rather one wall and one wall foundation, separated from each other by less than an arm’s length. The wall, because it was several courses high, has been visible for some weeks and we’d been referring to it as the ‘possible’ (how archaeologists love that word!) east end of the 12th century church, making that building several metres shorter than the 15th century one (which is what one would expect, as medieval churches tended to become larger and grander over time). That all seemed (relatively) plain sailing, until a week or two ago there popped up the other wall (foundation). You can see the two walls together in the photo above. Doreen is standing on the earlier wall foundation (which runs roughly from top to bottom across the picture) while the later wall is looming over her, to her right. And what about dates? Current thinking is that Doreen’s standing on a 12th century wall foundation and that the later wall to her right might have been built in the 13th or 14th century. However, Dr Richard Fawcett from Historic Scotland is coming up next week, and we’re confident that he’ll help us sort it all out!
If you look back again to the photo showing Doreen above, you’ll also see Abeer Ralston, busy excavating the remains of a grave which appears to have been disturbed when the earlier wall foundation was built. We think that the disturbance took place within a few decades of the burial, because it looks as if the body, or at least a substantial part of it, had been ‘folded over’ and replaced in what remained of the grave. In the next photo you’re facing the way Abeer was in the previous picture, looking into what was originally the ‘head’ end of the grave, on to the ribs of the individual. A darker stain indicates wood traces, possibly fragments of the damaged coffin, or a piece of wood placed over the remains by the wall builders when they reburied them.
We’ve been happy to have so many visitors over the last couple of weeks. Please keep coming. It’s a rare treat for us to be able to show people round our excavations, which are often off-limits to the public because they take place on commercial building sites. We’re looking forward to seeing you on our next Open Day, this coming Saturday (22nd July), when you’ll be able to catch up on the very latest news and indeed see the scallop shell on display.
