Once again things seem to be moving quite fast! As I was posting the last entry, up at the site some wonderful early Neolithic pottery was being found, with a really nice bit of rim which should help identification. It is about 6,000 years old, and came from the side chamber which is in trench B. we found about 5 or 6 pieces in all, so we are wondering if it might be a disturbed deposit and that there will be more further down. As pottery didn't even exist before the Neolithic, this is very exciting, because it represents some of the earliest ceramics that can be found, and shows that people in South Kintyre we in residence and manufacturing all that time ago. It leads me to wonder how many direct ancestors of the people who built the tomb might still be living in the area. The chances of us finding any material we might get DNA from though, are virtually zero, so the answer to that will have to remain speculative. Perhaps some things are better left that way anyway!

The other particularly special find, from yesterday (Monday) is a wonderful leaf shaped arrow head, from just outside the courtyard area in trench A. This again is early Neolithic, and beautifully made. A tiny bit is missing from the tip, but it is otherwise complete and is quite an unusual find from a Clyde type cairn.

We also have the possibility (early days yet) that the monument may have been striped! In the courtyard area, between two of the upright stones, some of the tumble looks like it might just hide a little of the fill used between the stones. Like I said, it is early days, but it looks possible at the moment that the fill was made up of dry stone walling in alternate bands of thin pieces (about an inch thick) of pink and white stones! There is certainly precedent for this kind of thing, so it is quite possible that it is the case.

Finally, as far as the structure is concerned, the drystone walling in trench B continues to impress as it is being cleaned and cleared of debris. This is only on the side facing out across the valley. (It seems the builders wanted it to look impressive from that side, and weren't too bothered about the other side. Could this be an early example of aspirational architecture intended to impress the neighbours? A sort of Neolithic version of stone cladding?)

Meanwhile we had a visit from a gentleman from Historic Scotland on Friday (the wettest day of the dig so far) who was very impressed to see we had, despite the weather, people working on site. What he didn't see was that as soon as he had disappeared into the mist on his way home we packed up and decamped to the Tea Shop in Southend as fast as possible!

We also had a visit from Adam Stanford of Aerial-Cam who takes low level aerial photographs (amongst other things) of archaeological sites with a very fancy telescopic mast mounted on his landrover. Unfortunately Blasthill turned out to be the first site ever to defeat his 4-wheel drive, and we had to resort to the rather more low-tech 'camera on a stick' approach! We look forward to seeing and publishing his photos once thay have been suitably processed.

On a final note, I would like to mention (and invite suggestions about) the curious case of the beach quartz. Quartz is not uncommon in the area, nor is it uncommon on Neolithic sites. (it would seem they liked to decorate their tombs with it, which must have looked very impressive when the sun hit it.) But, at Blasthill, we are finding a lot of quartz which has been smoothed and rounded by water action, either river or sea. Blasthill is, of course, several hundred feet above sea level, so this beach quartz must have been brought up to the site by people. The question is, why? Why not use the angular (and more sparkly) quartz from the hill tops?

Next post will be in a few days, but in the meantime we will be on Argyll FM on Wednesday, sometime between 1 and 2 in the afternoon, and in this weeks Campbeltown Courier. Or of course you can come and visit us on site, either on our open day on Sunday (10-4) or any other time that suits you.