For the purpose of this
article, the position that ‘Archaeology’ is the pursuit of history
from where the written sources of history fail us.
In Dornoch, the written historical sources are
thin indeed. Our main written source, by Mackay, the Town Clerk in
1926, provides few references, or indeed where his references
could be found. Most of the works on Dornoch since Mackay simply
follow uncritically in his trail. This leaves the way open for
archaeology to fill these gaps.
Dornoch would have had obvious attractions as a
settlement area for hunter-gathers of the early Stone Age [or
Mesolithic] peoples following the slowly retreating ice around
9,000 years ago. They would have exploited the original, ‘raised’
beach that would have run from just in front of Cnoc-an-lecht,
snaking around the first tee of the golf course to the north and
east, and below the current road past the Academy and inland to
west.
The Dornoch burn also provides a rare source of
running water on the north side of the Firth. The red sandstone
cliffs would have also made for an easy landmark for these nomadic
bands - perhaps even forming a cultural focus. At the present,
there have been no finds from of the Mesolithic period around
Dornoch. Any traces of their slight shelters and shallow pits in
the ground would have been removed long ago. Perhaps some
sharp-eyed person might find some of their distinctive small
flints on the golf course?
Around 6,000 years ago, the earlier
Hunter-Gathering life style of the previous 4,000 years was
rapidly replaced by incoming farmers. This was the ‘New Stone Age’
[or Neolithic]. With a new style of living, came new cultural
ideas. The Mesolithic ‘hunter gathers’ left us with very little of
their lives. The new farmers bequeathed their dead to posterity.
They were usually interred in common mausoleums, or latterly, in
single cist burials. Their cairns seem to have held a long
sequence of communal burials, then seemingly sealed with a single
complete human internment. There are traces of a possible cairn on
the north east slope of the Burghfield visible as a spread of
stones after ploughing. A polished stone axe, [a common grave good
of this period] was recovered from this area. The Spinningdale
area has an interesting collection of surviving cairns. From the
Spinningdale and Embo [Grannie’s Highland Home] cairns, it is
possible to speculate that these cairns were meant to be viewed
from quite specific areas. Alternatively, they form viewpoints for
specific areas - perhaps these areas either spiritually or
physically ‘belonged’ to those interred within their home area
cairn? Field walking in recent years has produced evidence of
Neolithic imported flint working on the Cuthill links, and flint
artifacts from Ospisdale.
The transitional period to the Bronze age is
marked by single cremated or inhumation burials in stone-slab
lined lists, with small pottery vessels, a flint item or two, and
perhaps small bronze items being recovered. This suggests a change
from loosely organised societies to groups with a personal focus.
Perhaps, a change from a more general ‘clan’ ancestor worship,
towards a central priest or chieftain. At Dornoch, a cist was
uncovered at the old Forestry Commission Plantation on the Embo
Road. It is interesting to note that these single burials were
covered with stone cairns, often of some complexity. These
covering cairns were then often used for the interment of
cremations. The area around these cairns then attracted later
burials, sometimes into the historical period. The Plantation cist
had sadly lost its cairn marker, which probably saved it from
looters and ‘antiquarians’. Another typical Bronze age monument is
the ‘megalith’ or standing stone. Although no megaliths have
survived in Dornoch, there are examples close by at Ospisdale and
Creich, both associated with cemeteries down the centuries.
The Scottish Bronze age lasts until around 500BC,
when Iron Age artifacts make their appearance. The Iron Age is
structurally represented in Scotland, and especially in the
Dornoch Firth area, by ‘Hut Circles’, Brochs and crannogs or
artificial islands. The hut circles are interesting as they take
many forms. Some are terraced, with and without stone walls,
others are on the flat with or without external ditches, others
are more sunken. Some have a ‘souterrain’, or extended cellar
running from them, as was found at Cyderhall in the early 1980’s.
Some of the huts may have been largely built in stone, as in the
Hebrides. It is possible that some of what are now termed Brochs
are actually large circular stone built ‘huts’ - or wheelhouses.
The somewhat disparaging term ‘hut’ tends to overlook the point
that these structures have ground areas somewhat larger than the
present day house. It is probable that most were one and a half
stories high internally, with livestock below, people above, as in
modern Scandinavian or Alpine farms. Although roundhouses first
appear in the Bronze Age, and some in Argyll were occupied into
the 1000’s AD! Interesting examples of ‘sunken’ round houses can
be viewed in the Camore Wood, just to the south east of
Dornoch.
In Scotland, their is no clear defining event to
end the Iron Age. In England, the arrival of the Roman legions [55
AD] is generally taken as being the end of their Iron age.
Locally, we have recently recovered Romano-British goods imported
from the south. There are 1st/2nd century AD brooches from
Auchenchanter and Ospisdale. Unfortunately, we do not know if they
were buried as grave goods, hoards, offerings, or lost, or even
how they got to the Dornoch area.
The main cultural entities we have during the
Iron Age are the Celts and the Picts. The Picts have been now
incorporated into the European-wide culture of the ‘Celts’ as
portraying an early form of European Union. The Picts have largely
disappeared from the historical record as they did not have a
written culture. The main record for the Picts are their carved
stones. These permanent Pictish records are abundant around the
Firth - at Portmohomack, Edderton, Kincardine and Creich. All
these stones are or were in what are now Christian centres.
Dornoch alone does not have surviving Pictish stones. This is
surprising, as Dornoch has an early Irish Christian founding
legend, and a favourable geographical location. There are Pictish
place names in the vicinity, [e.g. Pitgrudy?] but nothing tangible
has been located from the Picts within Dornoch.
The culture responsible for first writing down
[and thereby fixing] the place names in the Dornoch area was the
Roman Christian church. These early priests would have had as
their symbol their written ‘book’ which held their ‘word’. Once
established, the Christian priests would soon have been invaluable
in Royal households as the permanent recorders of land charters,
services owed, stock owned, and letter writers. However, it is
interesting to note, that in the Dornoch Firth, as elsewhere, the
Church used earlier religious places and symbols for its own
purposes. The examples at Creich and Edderton have been noted
above. An interesting point is - from were and when did the early
church arrive in Dornoch, and who was its local protector or
sponsor? At the present, the feeling is that the original Church
came from Iona, down through Assynt and along the Oykel. The
vitrified fort on Dun Creich would represent an example of a
‘Royal’ location begging direct comparison with Dunadd in Argyll
or Dumbarton Rock. There are unsubstantiated reports of ‘Culdee
cells’ being found during the building of the Burgh School. The
Culdees were the earlier ‘Celtic’ church priests, continuing in
the tradition of St Ninnian at Whithorn.
Another interesting point is that the Church in
Dornoch seems to predate the Viking or Norse arrival. In the
‘Orkenying Saga’, it is made out that ‘Sigurd the Mighty’ 1st Earl
of Orkney, [c.850 AD] was not a mere ‘Viking’, or summer raider,
but a man representing a vigorous new conquering culture. It may
be, after removing Earl Maelbgyte, [a rare recording of a Pictish
personal name], Sigurd merely took over a well run ‘kingdom’, its
royal estates and clerics. This is echoed in the Charter for
Gilbert’s Cathedral, as noted by Mackay, in that the farms and
estates present in the early 20th century were present some 800
years previously. Could one postulate that Sigurd took over an
estate based on Skibo [‘Sigurds Bo’ - ‘Bo’ = Norse for estate
farm] as his residence, flanked by a church estate on what is now
Dornoch, and another large estate being based on Creich? Some
local Norse place names are e.g. ‘Pennyland’ [a taxation unit],
Spinningdale and Ospisdale [for the Round and Opi’s valleys
respectively, Norse ‘dalr’ = valley]. Again, nothing Norse is
recorded within the Dornoch burgh area. The Norse period finds are
largely the rich pagan Norse female burial goods from Ospisdale. A
recent Dornoch find is a small enamelled bronze hand bell,
possibly from Meol, Cambridgeshire, from around 1000 AD, but
normally associated with late Norse occupation. The fortuitous
archaeological intervention at the Business Park site would seem
to indicate the presence of an almost industrial scale iron
smelting of bog ore, with smithing within the former machair sand
dunes, probably Scandinavian. This large scale integrated iron
working is interesting, as it may be the source of iron for the
contemporary smiths over at Portmohomack. The site also produced
part of a later, large wooden house/byre structure. If these ‘Dark
Age’ dates are proven, this site would be of international
significance for the period.
The Norse incomers seem to have been assimilated
into the local population fairly rapidly. A reason would be that
the Norse settlers would have been relatively few in number
compared to the local populace, and were cut off by bad seas from
their northern power base for some six months of the year. The
changing situation is reflected in the rise of Gaelic place names
in the land records and place names. An example is Auchenchanter -
the Farm of the [Cathedral] Precentor.
The church was also experiencing difficulties,
seemingly of its own making. The loss of two bishops of Caithness
in Halkirk, led to a brutally put down insurrection in these Norse
lands. A new warrior bishop was appointed, primarily for his
ability to raise armed forces to protect himself, the new secular
Scottish state, and the Church, from his family base across the
Moray Firth.
The new bishop, Gilbert de Moravia, built what is
Dornoch’s prime archaeological artefact, the Cathedral, when he
moved his seat from Halkirk in 1233. His chosen site was close to
the original church, known by 1223, of St Finbarr. Bishop
Gilbert’s cathedral precinct would have been expected to include a
Bishop’s palace complex, monk’s dormitories, a guest house, manses
for the vicars of the Diocese and cathedral officials,
accommodation for the lay household, horses, a mill, gardens and
probably a ‘home’ farm. These structures have been swept away, and
the precinct boundaries lost. Although some possible ditch traces
were observed in the High Street electrical undergrounding. The
cathedral has also lost its side aisles and chapter house [the
connecting priests chapel] which stood close to where the Market
Cross now stands. The manses seem to have been sited at St.
Michael’s over the burn. The Dornoch burn had a mill, and a mill
pond. These too, have been lost. The original Bishop’s Palace
complex traditionally stood where the court buildings stand today.
From the Business Park project, one may postulate that the
original ‘town’ of Dornoch only contained the Church structures.
The lay people may have occupied the ‘natural wastes’ of the
surrounding machair, using the dunes for shelter from the sea
winds.
The next major archaeological event is the 1570
burning of Dornoch. The town records which were stored in the
Cathedral were lost. The Countess of Sutherland’s building
campaign of 1810-15 completely destroyed the Medieval town layout.
The removal of the mediaeval structures begs the question of how
the old structures were disposed of? Presumably the rubble would
have been used to infill the old Dornoch burn. Possible survivors
are the ‘Dornoch Imp’, probably a [corbel or beam support],
opposite the present Deanery, and a matching pair of square cut
red sandstone blocks with a recessed panel built into the
churchyard wall just to the west of the Market Cross gate.
The renewal of the electricity supply in the High
Street and St. Michael’s areas as observed by interested locals
revealed interesting glimpses of the lost medieval Dornoch. In the
High Street, at the Bank of Scotland, a continuous layer of
charcoal, was recorded sitting on sand directly below the
pavement. Is this the remnants of the 1570 town burning?
At the entrance to Gilchrist Square, a pit
allowed close examination of a probable ditch infill. This was a
sticky black organic deposit, interleaved with downwards dipping
bands of sea shells. This fill extends east and west along the
street. A pottery fragment with a green glaze [typically 13-15th
century] was recovered from this deposit. This is the only known
archaeological pottery fragment from Dornoch town centre. The
ditch may be the original cathedral yard ditch. Most of the
trenches in the east end of the High Street produced fragments of
sheep skulls and lower legs - [from skinning?] A couple of human
limb bones were also recovered, much less than expected. This
surprising lack may be due to the substantial depth and extent of
the modern levelling up of the eastern High Street, covering any
archaeology.
An interesting revelation was the rubble filled
corner of a substantial stone structure aligned north east,
running off under the present chemist shop. This is assumed to be
the later [1730] town chambers, which replaced the chapter house
which had served this purpose previously. A trench hard by the
small bridge confirmed that the present burn channel is cut
directly into undisturbed glacial deposits. Archaeological
deposits were observed under the road by St Michael’s, itself
incorporating late medieval stone work. These deposits may mark
the edge of the original burn course.
The drain cuts at the entrance to the Business
Park raised the tantalising possibility that the ‘Meadows’ road
tarmac covers a substantial ditch. Perhaps a ditch for the
Bishop’s Castle or even the southern edge of the original
Cathedral precinct ? Many other structural ditches were noted, but
not investigated, during the road instatement during the Business
Park works.
Unfortunately for the archaeology of Dornoch
there is apparently no requirement for archaeological
investigations during trenching works, even within the Historic
Scotland ‘zone of archaeological interest’. This, in effect, means
that it is unlikely to be more archaeological discoveries in the
burgh, unless there are new building foundations to be dug, which
is improbable, given the constricted nature of burgh townscape.
There is currently no evidence of any local interest in this
aspect of the Burgh’s story. Indeed, the ‘improvements’ currently
envisaged under the Euro-funded Moray Firth Small Towns scheme
presages further damage to area of the former Bishop’s Close, the
old graveyard, and other parts of the medieval town - all with no
archaeological intervention! This is in spite of national and Euro
planning guidelines to protect our archaeological heritage for
posterity,