Time Team in hunt for Viking boat burial and Pictish graves on Shetland
Excavation team ‘sense the site could be very special’
The site of a “probable” Viking boat burial on Shetland has been excavated by archaeologists from Time Team.
Crews from the long-running show spent a week at Huesbreck in Dunrossness in the south mainland to examine the site to determine whether it was the last resting place of a high-status Norse settler.
Historic Environment Scotland earlier listed the area site as the likely site of a Viking boat burial given the oval-shaped feature in the landscape.
The Time Team excavation will determine the exact nature of the site, which is close to land earmarked for a proposed housing development.
Dr John Gater, of Time Team, earlier said there was a “sense the site could be very special”.
The results of the Time Team excavations are being kept under wraps until the dig features in an episode of the long-running show, which is now broadcast online after coming off Channel 4 in 2014.
Paul Clark, of the Orkney Research Centre for Archaeology (Orca) at the University of the Highlands and Islands, said establishing a Viking boat burial at the site would be “very significant” for Shetland. While Viking burials have been found on Orkney, only 13 are known on Shetland so far.
Vikings arrived on Shetland and Orkney in the early to mid-9th Century and ultimately integrated into established communities, with a healthy population growth then following.
The site at Huesbreck also features three separate mounds, which could indicate the presence of a prehistoric or Pictish burial ground.
Mr Clark, in an application to Historic Environment Scotland for scheduled monument consent for the dig, said: “Although the precise nature of the three mounds is uncertain, the presence of apparent man-made features on the geophysical survey results and their proximity to the potential boat burial suggests they may be additional burial features, supporting the interpretation that this site is a ship burial rather than a house site.
“In Scotland, there is a wider pattern of the location of pagan Viking burials, including boat burials, on the same site as earlier prehistoric or Pictish cemeteries...”
He added that square-like features picked up in a geophysical survey of the site would “be consistent with burials from the Pictish period”.
Mr Clark added: “The Huesbreck burial site has significant potential to enhance our understanding of both the Pictish and the Viking period within Scotland.
“Pictish burials, meanwhile, rarely include grave goods, but often include important organic material that can further enhance ourunderstanding of this period of Scotland's history.
“The evidence suggests that the site has ahigh potential to be a relatively undisturbed Pictish cemetery, later reused for a Viking shipburial.
“This would be an exceptionally rare undisturbed example of this type of site within Scotland on our current knowledge, and it has high potential to enhance our understanding of both Pictish and Viking era funerary and ritual practices within Scotland.”
Dr Val Turner, the regional archaeologist for Shetland, first came across the site and observed distinctive features during a routine survey for the proposed housing development.
If confirmed, Huesbreck would join a small group of known Viking-era boat burials in the UK, which are often linked to individuals of high social standing.
Such burials are considered archaeologically significant for what they can reveal about Norse settlement and belief systems during the early medieval period.
The first fully intact Viking boat burial site ever uncovered on the UK mainland was found on the Ardnamurchan peninsula in 2011.
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