East Kirk of St Nicholas dig 11th - 15th December 2006 - Week 46
East Kirk of St Nicholas dig 11 to 15 December 2006 – Week 46
Judith Stones, Keeper of Archaeology, writes….
Every time we think we’ve had all the excitement, this extraordinary site yields up yet more! On Monday this week one of the earliest burials on the site, dating probably from the 12th century, turned out to contain not just one, but two scallop shells, both lying near the head. You can see them in the first picture, showing Iain Ralston cleaning the skeleton for photography.
We’d love to have suggestions as to how the shells ended up quite where they did. Pilgrims to the shrine of St James at Santiago de Compostela in Spain are sometimes shown wearing their scallop shell badges attached to their hats – but these two don’t look in the right position for that. Iain was wondering whether they might have been sewn on to a pillow which supported the dead man’s head. That’s a better idea than my suggestion that he was clad in a garment that had a rather copious hood to which they were fixed. Both of these shells, like the other two we’ve found previously, have had holes bored in them to allow stitching.
In the next photo you can see the entire skeleton in its grave cut into the natural subsoil.
You may notice how regularly placed the feet are and the taut positioning of the arms, perhaps indicating that the body was tightly wrapped for burial. This grave, and a few others nearby, of about the same date, share another interesting characteristic. They contained remains of what we’re loosely describing as ‘twigs’ as well as some bark fragments, which look like birch to my untrained eye, but will no doubt be identified as something completely different by an expert! In the case of the ‘scallop’ man, our imaginations have been leaping wildly and we’ve been wondering whether he had a wooden staff to go with his shell ‘badges’, the better to emphasise his pilgrim status!
Sandra McKay, our photographer, took a few general views of the site this week, to show it in its almost finished state. Incidentally, she says that we’ve used 800 colour films so far – plus, of course, several hundred black and white ones, not forgetting all the digital images that have been taken for use in this diary. That may seem very ‘belt and braces’, but the photos are an irreplaceable component of the ‘virtual’ record of the site, along with the equally numerous drawings. The next shot gives a good overall impression of the depth of the dig.
The little party of people on the left, being shown round by Aidan, are local Blue Badge guides – we’re still having visits from groups who haven’t had a chance to come when we were open to the public earlier in the year. Running across the site from left to right, just in front of the big rectangular patch of light, is a sort of hollowed-out area where the foundations of the earlier of the two 12th century rectangular east end walls of the church have been removed during the dig. We’ve been puzzling for some time over why they built two east walls only one metre apart, but we’re fairly sure now that the earlier one became unstable because it was built in the softer ground of a pre-existing ditch which had been further loosened by gravedigging. So the second wall was built to replace it. In the next photo you may be able to see the same line of the earlier east end wall and also where the line of the earlier ditch continues north (right), until it meets the huge outer wall of the 15th century church (with the 19th century wall of the existing East Kirk on top of it!) There’s a barrow and a light tripod on the ditch line.
And next there’s a picture showing a section cut across the bottom layers of the ditch, which shows as a darker, ‘V’ shaped area of soil.
But it’s not all soil, ditches and skeletons! Here’s Jan Dunbar, one of our Archaeological Unit illustrators, just loving the idea of being photographed recording details of the medieval stairway which led between the (still existing) St Mary’s Chapel and the choir of the 15th century church above. The stair was probably blocked at the time of the Reformation in the 16th century.
Although work will continue on site this week, this is the last diary of 2006. Please log in again in January, but for now may I wish you a very Happy Christmas!
For further information and comment, please contact judiths@aberdeencity.gov.uk: 01224 523658.
East Kirk of St Nicholas Week 45
