VIKING UNST PROJECT: FIELD SEASON 2008 - Nabo

Lower room & ash pitWork also concluded on investigations of the substantial ash pit running lengthwise downthe lower room and out under the end wall of the house ([040]/[039]/[374] to the west and[037]/[038]/[375] to the east). It is now confirmed that the pit is older than the end wallsand that the house must have been substantially shortened (or the position of the house as awhole shifted down slope) when the later end wall was rebuilt over the ash pit. The fill ofthe ash pit [378] was sealed by flags [291] and [338] which in turn were sealed by the endwall, suggesting a further phase when the pit went out of use but before the end wall wasrebuilt. Whether this ash pit formed part of a structure of the same or an earlier or laterphase as the sunken structure is not yet apparent.A lone post hole hard by the inner face of the western long wall of the house [031] consistsof cut [384], fill [385] and chocking stones or rubble [383], sealed by [324]. There is afragment of steatite bake plate at the base of its fill, which cannot have acted as a post padbeing too fragile, and so may be a later deposition when the post hole went out of use andwas infilled. The position of the feature, hard by the western wall, also suggests it belongsto an earlier phase or structure before this section of wall was built. There are no otherpostholes in the building which would correspond to this one, the holes found last yearbeing on different alignments and of less substantial size.Excavation of further sections of the gully were unable to follow its course south of theupper room; it may be that the feature continued only in more shallow soil deposits whichhave subsequently been lost, perhaps with scalping. What further excavation of this featurehas demonstrated is how close the back wall [048] comes to the gully, suggesting thepossibility that the gully is older than the surviving wall face. In places the wall has startedto collapse into the ditch, showing that in its present form it stands too close to it.These features suggest that rebuilding may have been more substantial than is obvious fromthe remaining deposits on this partially denuded and rabbit disturbed site, and that the siteitself was substantially longer lived than it might at first appear. Work continues on the postexcavation analysis, but the poor quality of survival of deposits and the amount of rabbitdisturbance means that we may never be able to fully phase these more isolated features.However it is hoped that radiocarbon and archaeomagnetic dating will at least give us broadphasing which can be refined by the archaeological results.2.2.2 House 2, Area C (Figure 2.3)The continued excavation of Area C began with the removal of the 2007 backfill. Oncecleaned and recorded the trench across House 2 was extended by one metre to the NW andSW. The principle aim of this year’s work was to investigate, record, and sample anyoccupation deposits sealed by the post-occupation ash midden infill of this structure, shownby radiocarbon dating of barley from the fill to be 15 th to 17 th century in date (see Outram etal., Chapter 5, this volume). In addition the extended excavation area, measuring some 10mx 2.5m, allowed a more detailed examination of exterior deposits on the building’s hillwardside.19