Dig diary – Structure Forty‑Five confirmed as its neighbour’s architecture and closure clarified

Day 18
Wednesday, July 29, 2026

Tonight’s update begins with the wall section that started appearing late yesterday afternoon. Fully excavated today, it runs towards – but stops just short of – our circular building, Structure Forty‑Four.

At its southern end, however, it meets a second curving wall belonging to a newly identified building, Structure Forty‑Five.

Geophysics carried out last year had hinted at Forty‑Five’s presence and a small portion of its northern end emerged this morning as the overlying baulk was removed.

Structure Forty‑Five lies roughly a metre south of the circular Forty‑Four. It was a long building, extending around ten metres beyond the trench edge to the south‑west. Yesterday’s curving wall – which proved to be very poorly constructed – butts up against Forty‑Five’s northern end wall, showing it was added while Forty‑Five was still standing.

Because the two structures respect each other, it is likely they were contemporary and the scrappy curving wall inserted between them later in their lives. The result was a small yard‑like area between the two buildings, comparable to examples seen in the later phases of Trench P.

Today’s work in the south‑eastern quadrant of Structure Forty‑Four confirmed the presence of the fourth suspected corner buttress. It also showed that these buttresses – which created the building’s cruciform interior – belonged to the structure’s primary construction phase.

It also added weight to the idea that Forty‑Four was deliberately decommissioned at the end of its life. Blocking material found outside the entrance suggests Forty-Four was intentionally sealed before being abandoned. Again, the deliberate blocking of doorways is something we’ve seen before. In Structure Twelve, for example, the southern and north-western entrances were blocked during its second-phase remodelling.

We’ve mentioned before that Structure Forty‑Four follows the template of later Neolithic buildings, like those at Skara Brae and the Barnhouse settlement, 400 metres to the south‑east. True to Ness of Brodgar form, however, Forty‑Four is larger – perhaps reflecting the same trend toward increasing scale and architectural ambition seen across the site’s monumental structures.

A good example of that ambition emerged today outside the doorway, where it became clear that Forty‑Four had a more elaborate entrance arrangement than the paving identified previously.

Perhaps along the same lines as the feature outside Structure One’s south‑eastern entrance, Forty‑Four has a line of embedded orthostats extending south‑eastwards from either side of the doorway. These uprights are not parallel but converge slightly at their outer ends. Excavation of this feature continues tomorrow – our final full day of digging – so we’ll let you know what turns up.

Just inside the entrance is a pronounced depression in the floor, likely formed by repeated movement in and out of the building over its lifetime. So although the occupants left very little material evidence of their activities, this wear pattern shows beyond doubt that Structure Forty‑Four was well‑used.

We’ll end today with a find. Not something we’ve been able to say often this season. This one, however, is a beauty – the shaft of a carved spatulate stone tool recovered from the area around Structure Forty-Five.

These tools are best known from Structure Eight in Trench P, but an example very similar to today’s emerged in Structure Twenty‑Seven in 2022.

Today’s spatulate tool shaft. (📷 Sigurd Towrie)

This weary soul is signing off for now, with a quick reminder that tomorrow is the final day the site is open to visitors. So if you’ve not yet seen the fruits of our labour — or fancy picking up some fundraising Time Team or Ness of Brodgar merchandise from the shop — Thursday is your last chance.

P.s. Sticking with tradition, we’re marking the end of the 2026 tomorrow with a little soirée. Which means tomorrow’s dig diary will almost certainly be later than usual — perhaps even slipping into Friday.

Cleaning the trench ahead of photogrammetry modeling tomorrow, while filming continues for Time Team. (📷 Sigurd Towrie)

When not digging, Jim has been rebuilding and improving ‘Digger’s Rest’ – our home from home he built outside
Structure Twelve many years ago. (📷 Sigurd Towrie)