Excavations at Milla Skerra Sandwick, Unst: Rythmns of Life in Iron age Shetland
Synopsis "Excavations at Milla Skerra Sandwick, Unst: Rythmns of Life in Iron age Shetland"
During the late 1st millennium BC into the early 1st millennium AD, the small island of Unst in the far north of the Shetland (and British) Isles was home to well-established and connected farming and fishing communities. The Iron Age settlement at Milla Skerra was occupied for at least 500 years before it was covered with storm-blown sand and abandoned. Although part of it had been lost to the sea, excavation revealed many details of the life of the settlement and how it was reused over many generations. From the middle of the 1st millennium BC people were constructing stone-walled yards and filling them with hearth waste and midden material. Later inhabitants built a house on top, with a paved floor and successive hearths, and more domestic rubbish accumulated inside it. Outside were new yards and workshops for crafts and metalworking, which were remodelled several times. The buildings fell into disrepair and became a dumping ground for domestic waste until the 2nd or 3rd century AD, when sand buried the settlement. Within a few generations, a man was buried beside the ruins along with some striking objects. Thousands of artefacts and environmental remains from Milla Skerra reveal the everyday practices and seasonal rhythms of the people that lived in this windswept and remote island settlement and their connections to both land and sea.Table of ContentsList of figuresList of tablesAcknowledgementsSummary1. Uncovering Milla SkerraOlivia Lelong2. The life and death of Milla SkerraOlivia Lelong3. Refining interpretations of the archaeological depositsBrendan Derham, Clare Ellis and Jo McKenzie4. Fires and food at Milla SkerraRuby Cerón-Carrasco, Brendan Derham, Jennifer Miller, Susan Ramsay and Catherine Smith5. The making, using and breaking of potsOlivia Lelong and Beverley Ballin Smith6. Craftwork at Milla Skerra: metalworking and bone, stone and iron toolsBeverley Ballin Smith, Torben Bjarke Ballin, Ann Clarke, Amanda Forster, Martin Goldberg, Fraser Hunter, Richard Jones, Olivia Lelong, Dawn McLaren and Anthony Newton7. Technologies of the self: painted pebbles, ornaments and the burialMartin Goldberg and Fraser Hunter, with contributions by Paul Duffy, Katharina Dulias, Ceiridwen J. Edwards and Amanda Forster8. Rhythms of life at Milla SkerraOlivia LelongBibliographyIndex
