East Kirk of St Nicholas dig 23rd - 27th October 2006 - Week 39
East Kirk of St Nicholas dig 23rd to 27th October – Week 39
We had a bumper crop of visitors for our final tour on Monday 23rd October – not far off 200, I think, some of whom were regulars and others ‘new’. During the course of the tour itself one of the team working below realised that the skeleton he was carefully excavating might be the remains of a woman who died in childbirth – possibly as long ago as the 12th century. Iraia, one of our human bone experts, seen in the first photo teasing away the soil from the woman’s bones, says it’s a relatively rare discovery, another indication of the excellent preservation of everything found on this site.
Although most of the site is very close to the ‘natural’ subsoil now, there is one small area towards the west end where some later burials are still being excavated. They include the skeleton of a middle-aged man who appears to have been a pipe smoker. In the next picture you should be able to see how his front teeth are notched, probably from chewing on a clay pipe.
It’s likely that he lived in the 17th century – certainly no earlier, as pipes, from various parts of the UK and Holland, seem to have been first imported here in the first quarter of that century. We don’t know of any pipe manufacturers working in Aberdeen until 200 years later. We’ve found a number of clay pipe fragments during the dig and they will be among the many items on display in our forthcoming ‘work in progress’ exhibition at Provost Skene’s House.
The next picture is a view of part of the site as it is now.
Removal of all the archaeological layers has resulted, in some areas of the dig, in a slightly bizarre ‘landscape’ effect, slightly reminiscent, on an exceedingly small scale, of the mesas in the Arizona desert (I know – I need a holiday!). These upstanding towers of gravel are quite interesting because they’re the very few bits of ground on our site which haven’t been dug away over the years for foundations, or graves, or for any other purpose – just pillars and undulations of undisturbed subsoil, in various shapes.
In the next picture Kevin is drawing a section across the upper part of one of them – the darker lenses of soil below his right hand are all that’s left of a small hearth, which could possibly be prehistoric, dating perhaps from several hundreds of years before there was a church on the site.
Carmen is also investigating a hearth-like feature – or part of one, which like Kevin’s, has been much cut about by later building work and gravedigging. Carmen’s hearth seems to have been set in a pit, which was cut through in the 12th century by the foundation of the first rectangular east end of the church. So the hearth must be earlier in date than that wall, the stones of which you can see in the background of the picture. The hearth contained some fragments of hand-made pottery, which are probably not medieval, so again we’re thinking prehistoric – but await the opinion of an expert!
As I pointed out to people who so kindly came on our last tour, the dig is closing to the public now for two very good reasons. The main dig area is nearly finished and the smaller areas still to be explored near the West Kirk won’t be visible from the gallery. Also, the members of the congregation of the Kirk of St Nicholas Uniting, having opened their church every week since March and served hundreds of cups of tea, are very deserving of a bit of a rest! But there will continue to be news on these pages of both the continuing digging and the post-excavation analysis work – and please come to our exhibition ‘Early Glimpses: excavations within St Nicholas Church, 2006’ at Provost Skene’s House, Guestrow, from 11 November.
I’ll finish, as I started, on the topic of visitors. We welcomed perhaps our youngest yet this week. Many people who’ve been on our tours will know Abeer Ralston, one of our archaeologists, who brought along her new daughter Nadine to see her first dig. Sensibly she’s staying on the clean side of the downstairs viewing window! Nadine’s father, Iain, is also an archaeologist on the site - and has featured in this diary from time to time.
For further information and comment, please contact judiths@aberdeencity.gov.uk: 01224 523658.
East Kirk of St Nicholas Week 38
