East Kirk of St Nicholas Week 5
27 February to 3 March
Judith Stones, Keeper of Archaeology, writes…
On Thursday this week, everyone on site had to wear earplugs to combat the blasting noise of the contractors breaking up surfaces towards the western end of the East Kirk, so that the dig can extend in that direction.
Somewhat bizarrely, that coincided with the arrival of Kenny Luke from the City Events team, to test a radio microphone which may help our Gallery visitors to hear better!
A very interesting burial emerged at the end of last week. Elizabeth Plane and Malachy Curran excavated it with great care and skill.
Elizabeth comes from Turriff and is an archaeology graduate of the University of Durham, while Malachy, from County Galway, has a degree in Heritage Studies from Galway Mayo Institute of Technology.
Both are very experienced field archaeologists, Malachy having worked all over Ireland, and Elizabeth in Ireland, England, France and Germany.
Iraia Arabaolaza, from the Basque Country in Spain, and one of the human bone specialists on site (she has an MSc in human osteology and paleopathology from Bradford University), says that it's evident that the person, who was perhaps only an adolescent when they died, suffered from a chronic systemic infection, which affected the upper and lower limbs as well as the skull. She suspects that the disease may have been syphilis. A final diagnosis will be made when the bones can be fully examined at the University of Glasgow.
Also this week two very regular rectangular trenches are being excavated by the team within the area of the dig. These are not archaeological features, but will hold additional supports for the Gallery and allow some of the church's 19th-century pillars to be taken away.
Some of those pillars are built on top of earlier, medieval structures which we need to be able to examine properly without endangering the Gallery above. In the photo you can see Carmen (left) and Iraia taking a break from digging to draw the vertical section of one support trench. As we dig down, detailed plans and sections are made by hand, usually with one person taking measurements and the other drawing.
Carmen Cuenca-Garcia is an archaeologist from Valencia in Spain.
When the dig is finished we'll use a computer drawing package to sort out the various features, periods and phases - but nothing beats the experienced human eye and hand on site.
There have been many smaller finds, including buttons, a necklace and a beautiful medieval jug handle - also a broken piece of sandstone with a mason's mark on it, in the form of a rather unequally incised 'X'.
This is the second mason's mark from the site so far - another is mentioned in the week 3 report. We saw a faintly similar 'X' mark on a stone in the foundations of King's College Chapel in Old Aberdeen, when an area was exposed last year.
Iain Ralston, who found the stone, has joined the dig in St Nicholas this week. He's just returned from a season of work with a British Museum excavation team at a tomb site in Upper Egypt, where he's in charge of work on the burial chambers.
Iain's from Ayrshire originally, has lived in Aberdeen for many years and has a degree in Egyptian archaeology from University College, London.