Star find of the day - a possible la Tene style brooch from the subdivided roundhouse...
...found of course by Elvire - I mean honestly, you'd think she'd be tired of hogging the limelight by now and prepared to let someone else bask in the glory, but no, she's enjoying every minute of it:
It's now safely packaged up and going to be heading off to conservation and X-ray, and Steve was speaking about it on the phone to Fraser Hunter of the National Museum so there'll be plenty of expert opinion on it for us in due course.
Elsewhere everyone was keen to get stuck back in after our days off, and here we have Carla and Chloe demonstrating that much used but rarely acknowledged archaeological technique: writing your context number on your hand immediately your supervisor tells you what it is, before you have time to forget it and have to ask them again:
We had a visit from Hannah from Radio Orkney today, who interviewed both Steve and Julie and also took some video for the BBC website, hopefully this will all be up next Monday.
The video included Star, back on site today after a week off, who was so exhausted after her starring role that she had to go for a good lie down. I swear that every member of the team gave her a welcome back hug, but she took it in her stride:
Jackie very nearly got best find of the day but was pipped at the post by Elvire and her brooch, with this pierced bone, which Keith thought might be for tablet weaving, which he's promised to demonstrate on Saturday at our open day:
Also from inside the roundhouse there's a stone pot lid and another worked bone next to each other, the bone Keith also thinks might be a small weaving batten, if not then possibly a spatula:
Since we've only got 2 and a half weeks left thoughts have been turning sadly to backfilling, and we've been taking advantage of the tide being out to start filling sandbags in preparation. There's more sand on the beach this year and a bit deeper than usual so it's easy enough to do, and not a bad job in the bright sunshine we had today:
Some of the team have been stocking up on our sweatshirts and hats with our logo on them courtesy of Logo Orkney and here's Talia sporting one of the woolly hats, along with a very nice bandage from where she shut her thumb in the door of the hostel. No, I don't know how you shut your thumb in a door either, but she's a woman of many talents and she somehow managed it.
Don't worry, it's not broken, just a bit mangled, she's perfectly fine and still hard at work running the finds trailer - you have to do more than that to get a day off work here!