EHG6587 - Excavation - Cnoc Stanger, Reay

A rescue excavation was undertaken by students and staff of the University of Edinburgh under the direction of Prof R.J. Mercer in two seasons of a fortnight each during the years 1981 and 1982 of deposits eroding from a sandy cliff face at Cnoc Stanger near Reay, Caithness. The excavation was funded by Historic Scotland. During the first season the site was explored over the area immediately subject to threat by a system of twelve 4 m by 3 m 'box' trenches deployed about a 5 m grid covering 20 m by 20 m. This system with its cumbersome and disruptive profusion of 2 m baulks (the minimum breadth feasible in this sand environment) was adopted in order to provide closely available stratigraphical reference points for features recovered in plan; and to facilitate sampling of a 1 m by 1 m column within each 4 m trench with the total extraction for laboratory processing of a 0.2 m by 0.2 m sample of that column. The second season was directed to consolidate the findings of the first season and to excavate entirely all structural features in plan. For this purpose Layers 1 and 2 (consisting of dune sand) were removed over the whole site by mechanical digger. Selected deposits were sampled for sieving (using 500 micron mesh sieves) and flotation, in addition to the more randomly distributed column samples of 1981. The excavations recorded a succession of remnant prehistoric round-houses. These remains lay within deeply stratified windblown sands and tilled soils, rich in midden materials, with associated ard-marks. Radiocarbon dates suggested that the structures related to occupation in the early first millennium BC. Fragments of possibly Beaker pottery suggested that the cultivation activity was of some chronological depth. <1>