I may have to take back all the bad things I've said about grotty Iron Age pottery, after Jackie came up with this truly spectacular find of the day, an exquisite little pot complete with its stone pot lid still in place:
Pot lids are very common finds on prehistoric sites in Orkney, from the Neolithic onwards, and are simply pieces of the ubiquitous Orkney flagstone shaped into a round and used to cover a pot, and they come in a wide range of sizes. I've found plenty of them, as had all the old hands on site, but none of us have ever found one still sitting on its pot. The pot itself is not quite complete, but since it still had its lid with it you have to wonder if it is was complete when deposited, and since it came from a section of collapsed walling it was likely broken during the collapse - we'll maybe find the rest of it yet.
In typical fashion Jackie found this about 5 minutes before I had to rush off to catch my boat home, which she's done in previous seasons, she specialises in waiting until I'm just about to head off when I get shouted back across the site to get the pics for the dig diary. I suspect she does it on purpose.
Still, it was by far the best find of the day, up to that point the star find was going to be this nice piece of molten glass:
Well, I found it so like it and I know it doesn't look like much, but it is at least evidence that they were melting glass on site, maybe to make glass beads like the toggle bead Elvire found the other day.
And finally, of all the jobs that Rose thought she would be doing as an archaeologist, I bet she never imagined that she'd be washing little presents left by seagulls off orthostats so they look their best in the site photos:
