Welcome to Bronze Age Bressay
Louise Yeoman who produces Past Lives has written this article, taken the photographs and recorded the audio for this blog post. It's all related to the episode of Past Lives which will be broadcast on Monday 19 September.
LOUISE YEOMAN
Welcome to Bronze Age Bressay - where the steam and stones are really flying.
Right next to the Bressay heritage centre in the Shetland Islands, there's a three thousand year old monument which has walked. Ok, well not without a bit of help... It's Cruester Burnt Mound which was moved stone by labelled-stone to escape coastal erosion by sea, wind and weather. Douglas Coutts of the groups tells you all about it here:
The people who look after the mound are the Bressay History Group. Mark Stephen joined them to take part in a hands-on back to the Bronze Age experiment. Of course they don't use the actual monument for experiments, it's irreplaceable, but they've built a replica right next to it, and that's used to investigate what burnt mounds are for, which is a bit of a mystery. You might be wondering what a burnt mound is by now. It's not much to look at! A big heap of burnt and cracked stones built up around a space for a hearth (called a hearth cell) and a stone tank built into a clay bed ( so it can hold water). They are always close to water of some sort or another, and the one thing we think we do know about them is that they're there to heat that water up, and that's done by roasting stones in a fire till they're red hot, and then you flick them out of the fire, down a slope and into the cold water tank. What could possibly go wrong?
Well quite a lot - when the stones get red-hot they can crack and explode - one false move and you'll have some nasty burns or scars from exploding stones to take home with you, so safety is important - goggles and steel toe-capped boots. Today's experiment, presided over by Robina Barton of the History group, archaeologist Lauren Doughton and spinner Sarah Foster Jarden was to heat nettles in the water to make a dye, and then to dye a urine-soaked fleece in it. Yum, yum! Yes, you read that correctly. In the name of science and history The Bressay team have been collecting the stuff and soaking wool in it to get the lanolin out the fleece and make the dye take. You can hear all the wonderful sounds of the experiment in our Past Lives programme on Monday at 14.05, but if you want to see it - here are the pics!
Photographs of the Burnt Mound, heating up the rocks, adding in the nettles, the fleece, mixing and finally, the wool.
You might also be wanting to know the results - but don't look till you hear the programme! But if you do - read on!
Lauren writes:
I'm sorry to say that the wool didn't change colour at all unfortunately! We got the lanolin out beautifully though (so the urine worked a treat!!). When I came to remove the fleece from the tank the next day the waterlevel had sunk so dramatically that the fleeces were no longer sitting in the liquor. It's a pity, just it just shows us that the Bronze Age folk knew what they were about when they dug the original tank into a natural clay deposit.I do have some balls of green wool which Sarah kindly spun us out of smaller test experiment we did beforehand, which is of the same nettle dyestuff and dyed using hot rocks (just in a pot instead of a tank!)
That's science for you - we're learning that the bronze age people knew a lot more than us, By digging their tank into a proper clay bed they could probably have made this work, but it was the experience that really impressed us. Anyone can heat up dye stuff in a pot, but heating the stones and rolling them and wondering if they'd go off like rockets, with the steam pouring off and hissing from the tank.... well add a few Bronze Age musicians some singing or some chanting and you'd have a very exciting experience and probably a big celebration afterwards. I'll never look at those boring old heaps of cracked stones the same way again.
This episode is broadcast on ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio Scotland, Monday 19 September
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