Swartigill Burn Pre-historic Site
The Swartigill Burn, the Black Hole Burn in old Norse, has a story to tell. Like all good stories the burn has a beginning, a middle and an end. Let's start at the middle, a wide flat floodplain contained between two high banks. On the north side the burn runs along the edge of the floodplain, below a medieval farmstead. It was not always so, and probably took a route on the opposite side of the floodplain, which also has along abandoned farmstead.
Where we started
In 2004 members of Yarrows Heritage spotted some stonework eroding out of the Swartigill Burn, and decided to investigate. A recent spate had dislodged some stones. On cleaning back a small area, we unexpectedly recovered a large assemblage of pottery from Early to Late Iron Age in date. Some of the rim shards were everted using the thumb impressions of the potter - a human touch across two millennia.
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ORCA (Orkney Research Centre for Archaeology) and UHI ((University of the Highlands & Islands) have contributed much time and resources to the project.​
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We have received funding from local funds including: Lybster and Tannach Fund, Foundation Scotland through the local Camster Fund, and the Tannach and District Fund.​
2004
The Swartigill Burn story started in 2004, when pottery and stone walls were seen to be spilling out of the side of the burn, in a broad floodplain. That was followed by some geophys in 2007 and an exploratory excavation and cleaning in 2012. These are all described in the 2012 Interim Report below.
2015 Year 2
A small scale study was undertaken over 5 days, to inform future, more expansive work on the site. This very modest exercise produced more decorated pottery, a quern rubber, a hammer stone, and a possible item of personal adornment made of copper alloy. Structural remains suggested by the Geophys were
confirmed as wall faces.
2018 Year 5
Further investigation of the site, now considerably
enlarged, comprising 3 major structures, labelled A,
a passage feature, B , a large sub-rectangular building
and C, partially revealed to the south of Structure B.
Another structure, through which the burn now cuts
will be separately study.
2025 Year 10
This years excavation may be the last year of formal evaluation of the site. The focus was therefore on sampling the most important areas, ie the hearths and central structures, aiming to get down to "natural".
