Heavy rain meant we couldn’t get on to site this morning (not for the comfort of the diggers I hasten to add, but rather because the midden turns to wet sludge in no time if worked when wet), and Eynhallow Sound did look suitably brooding under the lowering sky:
This afternoon was better & the team managed to do quite a lot. More rubble removal meant the Iron Age roundhouse is ready for sprucing up for its photo and Bonnie (on her last day on site) and Gavin got on with the recording.
In the middle of the afternoon we had a visit from Sigurd, Scott and the Willamettes (i.e. the field school students from Willamette University in Oregon) on their day off from the Ness of Brodgar excavation. I remember years ago asking one of them how to pronounce 'Willamette' and they said it rhymes with damn it - easy when you know how!
Talia has taken over in the finds trailer since Isabel had to head back south, and is doing a fine job of it, unusual to see a finds supervisor so cheerful, they're usually snarling at us for doing something wrong, maybe it was a grimace of pain, who knows?
The star find today was a fragment of rotary quern from inside the subdivided roundhouse, not looking its best in this shot but after its dried off a bit and been given a careful brush off it'll be ready to be drawn by Alan:
We've got 2 days off now to recuperate, hopefully the weather will be better when we come back!