Covers back on at Swartigill as archaeology team assess the latest discoveries at Iron Age site in Caithness – ancient bead highlights possible Caithness connections with the Roman Empire
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The Iron Age site at Swartigill on the Thrumster Estate has yielded up its treasures for this season and one artefact shows a possible connection between Caithness and the Roman Empire.
The star find at this year's community dig has to be a colourful 2000-year-old bead with a yellow spiral pattern which was recovered by former UHI student Val Ashpool.
Project leader Rick Barton, from UHI Orkney, said: "It's a very significant find and is officially classed as a Guido Class 13 Northern Spiral – a type of bead that's commonly found in a period between the 200BC and AD200. They're usually manufactured from recycled Roman glass so it would be made from material that's been imported as far away as the Palestinian region which would have been part of the Roman Empire."
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Rick said that this type of glassware may have been refashioned in workshops based around the south of Scotland or the north of England. He talked of the specialist glassmaking process that would have been used to construct the bead in which the furnace-softened glass is drawn over a shaped plug or mandel and cut into beads.
"They're most likely worn as jewellery, such as a necklace, or woven into hair or on clothing. It shows that these people had adornments that goes hand in hand with status," he added. The beads have been found around broch sites but may date from a later part of the Iron Age when the structure was repurposed.
More generally at the site, Rick said that other elements are being discovered at Swartigill such as formal fireplaces and hearths with evidence of burning. Swartigill has been found to contain various structures within it that have been designated A, B, C, D, E, F and G. "We're also seeing how the structures connect with each other through passageways and surfaces. We're finding environmental deposits with charcoal and carbonised plant matter which can help us understand the fuel sources, economy of the area and the environment at that time.
"There are also stone artefacts being found that could have been used for grinding and pounding. It shows possible craft specialisation at the site which required that technology." He says that as the dig progresses the team of volunteers, students and archaeological experts find better preservation of material at lower levels. "As we get further on with the excavation we're likely to find more and more information."
Holly Young, a PhD student at UHI Orkney, was working at Swartigill for her second season. "We're sampling the charcoal rich deposit to hopefully get some more information. We have a colleague who is a charcoal specialist who will analyse it. There's a hearth in Structure B that came up this year as well."
Another archaeology student, Travis Lowe, previously found microbeads from material recovered at the site that he painstakingly sifted through back at his lab in Orkney. "The beads are around 2mm in width and were found after a flotation process in which organic material floats to the top and residue sinks to the bottom and gets caught in a mesh." Travis added that there had been some interesting pottery finds this year which will be further analysed at the UHI lab in Orkney.
Bobby Friel from the Orkney Research Centre for Archaeology (Orca) talked about how more and more information is being uncovered as the dig continues. "The complexity of the site is increasing and we're getting more resolution with regard to the structures uncovered over the last couple of years," he said.
"There are more wall lines and structural features coming through and that adds to the jigsaw of the site." Bobby said that within the area of the dig there are seven defined structures that were built over the years. Some of the older buildings were probably used as quarrying material for newer structures. "The purpose of the site may change through its habitation period. It could have had transient residents, [animal] stock or peat cutting."
Asked why Swartigill was eventually abandoned, Bobby said that land use patterns may have changed as well as the focus of the civilisation that existed in the area. "The population could have got smaller and smaller becoming one family unit and they may have just moved somewhere else."
Islay MacLeod, from the Yarrows Heritage Trust which organised the dig, says that there will be an attempt to recreate the Guido 13 bead by local glass artist Michael Bullen at a special Science Festival event on October 1 at Wick High School.
Michael said: "The demonstration will be of a late Iron Age forced air charcoal bead furnace and will show how the people in the 1st century BCE may have made beads using broken Roman and Hellenistic glass and/or glass cullet traded from the Levant region of the Eastern Mediterranean as a raw material.
"The furnace would be a focal point to discuss how connected Caithness was to the rest of the world by trade and to explain the importance of the research work being done at the Swartigill archaeological site near Thrumster."
More information on the Caithness International Science Festival and this event can be found at: www.science03.org/event/family-fun-day/
The Iron age bead making event is in part supported by Bullseye Projects and the Living Edge Foundation.
