by Richard Guest
Almost three years has passed since the inception of the NOSAS Crannogs project, one sunny post-lockdown afternoon sitting around my patio maintaining a 2-metre separation, unable to meet inside but mightily pleased to be chatting face to face instead of by zoom. Who had even heard of zoom before lockdown? We hatched a cunning plan – to search satellite images for islands which might prove to be unrecorded crannogs. Surely there must be lots of them, secreted away in remote glens where archaeologists rarely tread? Well, no, actually.
Movement was still restricted so there was no shortage of volunteers, happy to have something different to do at home, and we soon had plenty of islands to look at in the field. Some were explored in 2022 but by the start of 2023 we had a shortlist of very promising looking targets which certainly looked like crannogs from the shore. They would need snorkelling or diving around to check out their underwater credentials to be sure whether they really were artificial constructions. There was also the Loch Achilty crannog, which had been dived and surveyed in 2022 and where timbers had been found which could potentially be radiocarbon dated (see previous blog posts here and here).
Aside from crannogs, but continuing the underwater theme, I had spent two weeks in 2022 diving HMS Natal in the Cromarty Firth as part of a Nautical Archaeology Society project. So it was that Claire Hallybone from NAS came up to present the findings of the Natal project at a NOSAS “MAD” evening (that’s Monthly Archaeological Discussion for the uninitiated) and also to dive some real and potential crannogs with me.
It was early March and whilst the weather was conducive to a jolly evening chatting in Strathpeffer Hall, for diving – not so much. Nevertheless, we braved a chilly Loch Achilty and were successful in obtaining a timber sample from the shallower of two embedded timbers. It was surprisingly hard work. I made two parallel sawcuts in the edge of the wood and then tried to chisel out the bit in between with my knife but the wood was so hard I broke the tip off my knife. Eventually the sample was obtained but it took about 40 minutes, by which time we were shivering with cold and both agreed one dive was enough for the day and the second, deeper timber would have to wait for another time.
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