Site Diary: Trench 4

Final stages of excavation

The work of final recording of the bank and entrance is now underway. Excavation has been completed, though we will have one final trowel of the soil in the west sondage to clean the soil and look for any evidence of fence stakes or hedge roots.

We had one significant revelation about the entrance through the field boundary. As you pass through the entrance form south to north, from one field to another, the arrangement of stones encourages you to turn to the east and face the formal façade of the cairn in Trench 3 (see fifth week diary).

We must remember that the artefactual evidence points to the field boundary and entrance having been constructed approximately 1,000 years after the cairn was built! This would suggest that for the people cultivating the field in the later Bronze Age/Iron Age this earlier monument, possibly a funerary site, was an important element in their daily lives as they went about the routines of agriculture.