SAIR 7:Catpund: a prehistoric house in Shetland

by Beverley Ballin Smith

with contributions by Torben B Ballin, Stephen Carter, the late Camilla Dickson, Paul Sharman, John Arthur

ISBN 0-903903-76-8

Published in February 2005 by The Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, in association with The Council for British Archaeology and Historic Scotland, in Adobe Acrobat format. Available free of charge (see Terms & Conditions of Use).

Report Summary

A prehistoric house was excavated in advance of industrial quarrying at Catpund, Shetland. Although little of the internal stratigraphy of the house remained beneath a modern cabbage enclosure (planticrub), the form of the house survived. The artefacts found in and around the house indicate the domestic activities which took place there, and the farming methods employed in the vicinity. A thorough analysis of the artefactual evidence suggests that the house was in use some time during the middle to late Bronze Age. This report considers the structural and environmental evidence for the house together with discussions on its form, the distribution of artefacts and dating. 

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Report content

(each section can be downloaded as a separate PDF file by clicking on the section title)

	Title
	Table of content
1	Summary
2	Introduction
	2.1 Aims and rationale of the archaeological investigation
	2.2 Geology, landscape and location
	2.3 Recording and excavation techniques
3	The stratigraphic evidence
	3.1 Trench A (the house)
	3.2 Trench B
	3.3 Trench C
	3.4 The platform
4	The environmental evidence	by Stephen Carter, the late Camilla Dickson & Beverley Ballin Smith
	4.1 Introduction
	4.2 Soils around the house
	4.3 Botanical analysis
5	The artefactual evidence	by Beverley Ballin Smith, Torben B Ballin & Paul Sharman
	5.1 Introduction
	5.2 The coarse stone assemblage
	5.3 The quartz assemblage
	5.4 Steatite
	5.5 Prehistoric ceramics
	5.6 Catalogue of artefacts
6	General discussion and conclusions
	6.1 Problems of artefacts distribution and survival
	6.2 Activities indicated by the tools
	6.3 Dating the house from the finds
	6.4 The enclosure
	6.5 The house
7	Acknowledgements
8	References