Pic: Bronze Age Bressay |
Bronze Age Bressay! was an ambitious and innovative project to reconstruct an eroding Bronze Age site on the island of Bressay, Shetland. The site, the Burnt Mound at Cruester, originally sat on the northwest coast facing Shetland’s capital, Lerwick. A previous excavation in 2000 revealed an impressive array of stone cells, together with a large hearth, a cistern, a stone tank and a sloping chute or passageway. These had all been built into a mound, formed from discarded stones that had been heated and then plunged into water. |
Burnt mounds with structures within them are very rare, and the Cruester Burnt Mound is one of only a handful of known examples.
The project ran through June and July 2008 and involved the excavation and dismantling of the site, which was then transported to Bressay’s Heritage Centre where it was reconstructed. The replica structures, built at the same time as the reconstruction was carried out, were intended to be fully functioning so that they could be used as a centre for experimental work into these enigmatic structures. Volunteers were trained in drystone walling and a range of archaeological techniques.
The reconstruction will be open to the public and the finished site is being interpreted for the public with an on-site information panel, a leaflet, and a permanent exhibition at the Bressay Heritage Centre. The project also includes a twelve month education and outreach programme led by Bressay History Group and involving the local school and volunteers from all over Shetland. Events have so far included Open Days, a series of public lectures, Living History days, ancient technology workshops (such as pottery making) and Experimental Archaeology days.
| A burnt mound is a mound of shattered stones and charcoal, normally with an adjacent hearth and trough. The trough could be rock-cut, wood-lined or clay-lined to ensure it was watertight. Radiocarbon dates vary quite widely, the earliest being late Neolithic, with clusters of dates between 1900 – 1500 BC and 1200 – 800 BC, with some outliers in the Iron Age. There are also some dates that go into the early Medieval period. The technology used at burnt mounds has much greater antiquity and is found from the palaeolithic onwards. |
Pic: Bronze Age Bressay |
The main explanation for burnt mounds is that they were cooking sites. However, there are problems with such explanations, not the least of which is the lack of any direct evidence of cooking. The process undoubtedly works; experiments were carried out in Ireland in the 1950s to show that a joint of meat could be fully cooked in about three to four hours through this method. However, bone is rarely if ever reported from burnt mound sites, which would be unusual for a cooking site. This has been explained as the result of the soils being too acidic for the bone to be preserved, but this is unsatisfactory. It would be rather unlikely that all of the soils relating to burnt mounds were so acidic that no bone survived, particularly as the pH of the soil will vary considerably from site to site. However, there are examples of burnt mounds that have been recorded on neutral or basic soils, without bone being apparent in the burnt mound material, Alternatives that have been suggested include saunas (where the intention is to create steam rather than cook anything), fulling, salt production, leather preparation etc.
The implication found in many accounts of burnt mounds in Britain gives the impression that they are found in Ireland and Scotland, but they also are found in Wales and in England. The Welsh examples tend to be upland and rural, as are many of the English ones, but there are also many found in the lowlying English Midlands. Barfield & Hodder’s interpretation of burnt mounds as potentially saunas arose from their various excavations of burnt mounds in the Birmingham area, while more recently forty mounds have been discovered in Birmingham . One example is in Moseley Bog where experiments were made in the late 1990s to asses the plausibility of the sauna hypothesis. [Wiki]
In order to replicate the burnt mound, it was decided to dig down and not build up, as a low hill lay on the reconstruction plot. A hole was dug that matched exactly the shape of the outer wall of the Bronze Age building.
Not only was the threatened Bronze Age building moved, we also built a second structure for conducting experiments in. This was built to the same dimensions as the original building, but using new stone. So far, we have built the hearth cell, the passageway, the tank and one of the side cells. In the future, dry-stone walling classes will be held and more cells will be added.
The replica stone structures were built with the aim of conducting experimental workshops to replicate a number of Bronze-Age style technologies. We also wanted to try to learn what burnt mounds were originally used for. Of course, there may have been a range of uses, and suggestions range from cooking, bathing, industrial processes and even making beer! Not only will we try different processes, we will measure the temperatures reached in the hearth cell and tank; record how long it takes to bring the water to boil; and see how many times we can use the same stones before they shatter.
The Project Team have not only done such marvellous work and promise much more but if you tour their site you will find many photographs of the various stages of re-building and their experiments. They promised more details of more detailed experiments in 2009 but as yet the site hasn’t been updated.
Go and visit the Bronze Age Bressay site for more details. Better still, go and visit the Visitor Centre on Bressay – one day, I’ll get there!
Pic: BBC
