Dig diary – mist, mud… and an Early Neolithic arrowhead

Day Three
Wednesday, July 8, 2026

After another night of torrential rain, the Ness lay under a heavy shroud of mist as the team gathered on site this morning. The mist we could live with – but the incessant rain had turned the area west of Trench T into a sucking quagmire, threatening to swallow the planks we’d laid and cut off access to the spoil heap entirely.

Fortunately, local plant operator Calvin Wilson (of JCB fame) came to our rescue and dropped off ten mud mats that made our spoil-laden excursions around the trench edge infinitely better.

Inside the trench, work pressed on in two of the four quadrants – the north‑eastern and south‑western.

In the former, Nick said hello to an old “friend” – the now out-of-use water pipe that, for many years, snaked across the centre of Trench P. It became clear late yesterday afternoon that the pipe, which once supplied water to Brodgar Farm, also ran through our new Trench TT.

That pipe section was exposed this morning and dealt with – exactly 11 years to the day that the Trench P stretch was ceremoniously, and with great relief, removed.

July 8, 2015: The water pipe running through Structure One (left) and Nick cuts through it prior to its removal.

It was in the south-western quadrant that today’s star find emerged.

Sigurd was trowelling back from the upper levels of an apparent stony feature when he found a tiny leaf arrowhead – only the third example of this type found at the Ness over 20 years of excavation.

Measuring only 25mm long, and 13mm at its widest, the artefact was fashioned from the same toffee-coloured flint we’ve seen before. Leaf arrowheads are typical of the Early Neolithic, circa 3700-3300BC in Orkney, but their use continued into the Late Neolithic.

Arrowheads were a relatively rare find at the Ness, the majority being Late Neolithic chisel arrowheads (30 in total).

Perhaps the best known is the Bronze Age barbed and tanged arrowhead found above the final animal bone deposit surrounding Structure Ten.

As the day wore on, the sun finally put in an appearance and, by close of play, was shining on more exposed stone features.

In the north-eastern quadrant we now have an arc of curving stonework running off under the south-eastern section. To the south-west, cleaning back was slowed slightly by a “clump” of stony material towards the end of the trench. What this relates to, if anything, remains to be seen.

Whatever it is, we’ll be back tomorrow to tell you more.

The curving stone feature in the north-eastern quadrant (left) and something stony in the south-western. (📷 Sigurd Towrie)