Broch from Oxtro

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The Broch of Oxtro (also called Haughster or Okstrow) is a largely worn Broch with unusually thin for Orkney walls. It is located between the A986 and the Loch of Broardhouse at Birsay in Harray on the Orkney island of Mainland in Scotland .

excavation

In 1847 the landowner had the hill above the Broch removed. He first found many stone boxes that George Petrie (1790–1866) was able to examine before they were destroyed. They were made of stone slabs, were 75 to 90 cm long, about 45 cm wide and deep and contained burned bones and ashes. An "eagle" is said to have been cut into one of the capstones, but that slab was built into a wall before Petrie arrived. One of the boxes contained a bowl-shaped stone vessel filled with ash and fragments of bone.

Petrie continued digging under the boxes and found the ruins of a round building, the walls of which were up to six feet high at the time. The remains are now almost 60 cm above the surrounding field. Petrie and Laing assumed that the brochure dates from the Stone Age at the latest , as they believed the boxes to be Bronze Age . The brochure was in ruins and covered in earth before the boxes were brought in. This diagnosis was made despite a shard of Roman pottery being found in the brochure.

The west arch had been destroyed before Petrie arrived. It undoubtedly contained the entrance. An intramural staircase has been exposed to the east , with the stair niche on the left and steps to the right. A long wall alcove with access to the central courtyard at the end, instead of the usual in the middle, was located in the northwest. A well was found in the central area, the drainage of which led towards the defective access area. A straight wall over the courtyard towered over the fountain, so it must be a secondary addition. Several radial plates on the inner wall were possibly secondary. Doubts have been expressed about the reliability of recording these features on the site map.

The Broch can be assigned to the Iron Age due to the fragment of Roman pottery . The boxes brought in are therefore not from the Bronze Age, but later. The "eagle" on one of the capstones suggests that the burial site was at least partially Pictish , but the crematoria in the boxes or pots suggest that an old burial tradition from the Pre-Iron Age survived on Orkney.

1963 resulted in an outer diameter of 21.8 m and a wall thickness of 3.8 m; the wall portion would thus be about 34.9%. Measurements of the preserved inner wall surface showed in 1985 that the central courtyard has a diameter of 13.66 m.

Finds

Some of the more important finds include:

Bronze : a zoomorphic semicircular brooch, an ornate needle with a loose ring head from the Viking Age, an Iron Age jug handle and a ring.

Silver : After the excavation, a cylindrical piece of silver 6.3 cm long and 1.9 cm in diameter was found in the borehole.

Bone objects : at least three long-handled combs, a button, the spherical head of an iron pin, 1 ring and a needle with a decorative connector and a slotted handle.

Stone objects: lamps, one of which appears to be Roman, several coarse vessels of different sizes, several pearls or spindle whorls, including an ornate five hammer stones, a polished disk with a diameter of 9.5 cm, a chipped disk with a diameter of 6 , 3 cm and three spindle whorls. A Pictish symbol stone .

Pottery : Under the shards there is an upturned edge shard and the edge of a coarse-grained urn. Roman finds encompassed half of the base of a terra sigillata vessel from the late 2nd or early 3rd century AD.

The Hunterian Museum has an Oxtro stone whorl and a bone awl, probably from the collection of JW Cursiter.

context

John W. Hedges identified 52 brochures on Orkney and analyzed 80. Only a few have double-walled walls. The entrances had door locks and guard cells. At least 10 Orkneybrochs have their own water supply ( wells in the Broch von Breckness ). A unique feature of Orkney is the appearance of countless outbuildings in a number of locations. The Lingro Broch, on the outskirts of Kirkwall , was excavated by George Petrie in the 1870s. The associated "Brochdorf", the largest on Orkney, was completely demolished.

literature

  • EA Alcock: Pictish stones class I: where and how? ', Glasgow Archaeol J, Vol. 15, 1988-89. P. 17
  • PJ Ashmore: Orkney burials in the first millennium AD ', In J. Downes, A. Ritchie, A, Sea Change: Orkney and Northern Europe in the later Iron Age. Balgavies 2003, Angus. Pp. 38-39
  • J. Close-Brooks: Pictish and other burials', in Friell, JGP and Watson, WG, Pictish studies: settlement, burial and art in Dark Age northern Britain, Brit Archaeol Rep, BAR British, Vol. 125. Oxford 1984.
  • JW Hedges: Bu, Gurness and the brochs of Orkney, part 3: the brochs of Orkney, Brit Archaeol Rep, BAR British, vol. 165. Oxford 1987
  • G. Petrie: Notice of the brochs or large round towers of Orkney, with plans, sections, drawings, and tables of measurements of Orkney and Shetland brochs', Archaeol Scot, vol. 5, 1, 1873. pp. 76-8
  • AS Robertson: Roman finds from non-Roman sites in Scotland ', Britannia, Vol. 1, 1970.

Web links

Coordinates: 59 ° 7 ′ 16.9 ″  N , 3 ° 18 ′ 18.9 ″  W.