In June of this year, we revisited one of the few permanent prehistoric structures found in the Neolithic axe factory. The site was partially excavated by Will Megarry and Hazel Mosley of Queen’s University Belfast, with help from a couple of members of Archaeology Shetland, in 2022. A part of the continuing research of the North Roe Felsite Project, it was downslope from the earlier excavation of a felsite quarry, alongside two felsite dykes and upslope from a felsite workshop. It was perfectly poised to provide further insight into the felsite extraction for stone tools during the Neolithic.

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Accessing the structure was no small effort. The 2-3 courses of stone visible on the surface soon gave way to a much larger site as nearly a meter of peat was removed revealing a primary oval structure 7.3 x 6.2m externally, with an immediately adjacent 3.5m circular outbuilding.

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Much to our surprise, the first artefacts found on the site were potsherds typologically late Bronze Age, perhaps very early Iron Age in date. These came from the edge of the small outbuilding. A hearth was centrally located in the large oval structure, and this provided a radiocarbon date of 1874-1672 cal BC, middle Bronze Age for last use.

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This year the work found some additional artefacts but, importantly, determined it was a single use structure. Excavating the remainder, it was found there were no earlier hearths beneath the last phase of use. Indeed, it was relatively short-lived in compare to the often-continual reuse of structures we find in prehistoric Shetland.

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We will await the final report.