Another wet and miserable day so we started with a bit more light sandbags shifting, just the thing to get everyone warmed up for the day ahead.
Gavin has been doing an amazing job in getting them all stacked up nicely on the edge of the trench, not only does it look neat and tidy but it makes it a whole lot easier to put them back in again, which we will be doing next month when we have to close the site up again.
After all of that hard work a few of the team were in need of a bit of therapy at tea time, ably provided by Daisy, there's nothing like a bit of wubba tummy to make everyone feel better:
It was good to see the passageway wall and the blocked doorway, which will soon be unblocked so we have the proper entrance into the remodelled interior of the roundhouse:
Meanwhile elsewhere on site Dr Cathy Batts was taking samples of the upper part of the smelting hearth for archaeomagnetic dating:
Alan then carefully excavated down to the lower levels, and cleaned up for a photo, we're still not sure what it was used to smelt, there's lots of vitrified slag around and now it's down to the lower level it has a distinctly curved shape, our archaeometallurgist has suggested we run a magnet over it to see if we get any magnetic response, as he's now not convinced it's for iron smelting after all, so I'm taking in the magnet we use to retrieve hammerscale from the flot sample residues to give it a go tomorrow.
Over in Trench F - our new trench over the wall in the field - our (possibly) Viking flagged area has now been exposed a bit more and was also getting its own photo opportunity, taking advantage of a late break in the weather with a bit of a drying wind. We were pleased to welcome back Jackie McKinlay on her annual busman's holiday from Wessex Archaeology, after a horrendous journey up involving cancelled flights and being transferred from Aberdeen to Edinburgh in a taxi. She finally arrived in Kirkwall hours late and would've missed the last boat to Rousay but for a kind intervention from other passengers with a hire car, who'd shared the miserable day, and drove Jackie all the way out to the Tingwall ferry terminal in time to make the boat. Anyway she made it at last, and here she is demonstrating the fine art of photo scale adjustment without standing on the surface you've just cleaned:
I think everyone has headed to the Taversoe for a well earned pint tonight, Wednesday night is the first night of the week that the pub is open so it's turning into a bit of a night out for the team over in Rousay, after all they've got to replace all those fluids they sweated out shifting sandbags and brace themselves for tomorrow.