Dig diary – home is where the hearth is
Day 11
Monday, July 20, 2026
On Friday we mentioned that something was appearing in the trench centre.
Today, we can say with confidence that we are looking at a hearth.
A central fireplace is about as typically Neolithic as it gets. Formed by stone kerbs, hearths were the literal and symbolic heart of the house — providing heat and light, domestic and social life centred on them.
The hearth emerging late on Friday afternoon. (📷 Sigurd Towrie)
Our newly uncovered hearth appears to have a stone base, is aligned north‑west to south‑east, and measures just over a metre in length. Its full width remains uncertain because the north‑western and south‑western sides are missing. That, however, is not unusual. Hearthstones were often re-used in the Neolithic, moved from an older structure into a new one — perhaps maintaining a tangible link to the past.
Although the hearth is not yet fully excavated, its presence confirms that the GPR anomaly represents a building. Based on today’s work across the trench, it wasn’t circular but sub‑rectangular with rounded corners.
Excavation of the hearth was paused today so the remaining baulks could be removed, allowing the underlying archaeology to be exposed. This revealed additional stonework in the north‑western quadrant, giving us a clearer sense of the structure’s footprint and likely development.
The stones still visible in the trench represent the building’s foundations — slabs on which the walls once stood. Those walls have not survived, likely due to a combination of prehistoric stone‑robbing and medieval/post‑medieval plough damage.
To construct the building, it seems the builders stripped away the topsoil to expose the natural boulder till, just as we saw with nearby Structure Five (c.3300BC). In the north‑eastern quadrant, the foundation slabs were cut into midden, suggesting the building was raised over an earlier, possibly timber, structure.
Also emerging today were traces of what may be three corner “buttresses”, which would have given the building a cruciform appearance very similar to the second phase of Structure One (c.2800BC) over in Trench P.
Like Structure One, we’re pondering whether our latest building represents a remodelling of an earlier on – perhaps involving the insertion of a curved internal wall and the creation of a secondary hearth.
Naturally, further excavation is required to confirm all these suspicions.
We were joined on site today by Time Team’s Sir Tony Robinson. Sir Tony, who fronted the programme from its launch in 1994 and helped bring archaeology into millions of living rooms, spent the day filming for the new documentary.
Between takes he toured the trenches, chatted with diggers, and spoke to visitors about Time Team’s past, present and future. His enthusiasm for the Ness — and for the painstaking business of excavation — was unmistakable. For many on site, his visit was a reminder of just how profoundly Time Team shaped public archaeology and how the Ness continues that tradition of making the past accessible, vivid and alive.
We’ll be back tomorrow with more updates.
