The first speaker of the afternoon was Derek Alexander, the National Trust for Scotland’s West Region Archaeologist. He told how the Trust wanted to investigate the founds of a building in the garden of Kilbarchan’s Weavers Cottage, the gable end only of which was still in existence. They wanted to see if they could determine the use of the building. A 2-metre trench was dug which revealed a rubbish pit. This held some surprises. The first was a neolithic axe. What was a 4000 year old artefact doing in amongst mostly 19th century pot? Even more of a surprise was the next find – a skull! This of course necessitated calling out the police. Derek told us that it must have been an otherwise quiet Sunday afternoon – the final tally was 4 uniformed officers, 2 CID, 2 forensic photographers and a doctor – to pronounce the skull dead!!!
Eventually the skull was taken off for testing and was pronounced to be “not recent”. Subsequent C14 testing indicated that it dated to somewhere between 1490 and 1630.
The search for a past use of the building had proved inconclusive but the process had been interesting. The possible explanation for the skull and axe was that a past custodian of the Cottage had been an amateur archaeologist and may have collected random artefacts.
Our next speaker was Tom Addyman of Addyman Associates. They had been commissioned by Renfrewshire Council when the imminent collapse of the Graveyard wall at the West Parish Church had forced its excavation, so that a new stronger wall could be built. The Council had told Tom to dig back 6 feet. He pointed out that this was likely to prove very expensive as, by law, if even the toe bones of a burial were disturbed then the whole body had to be properly excavated and recorded. To their credit they still gave the go-ahead! The excavation took place in May 2002 and took about six weeks. The wall itself had to be taken down carefully as it was known that ancient stones were included within its structure. Then the various graves began to appear. First to be excavated were a couple of table graves where the top slab had been relocated when the graveyard level had been raised in the 19th century, but interestingly the pillars on which the slabs had lain were still in situ. As the dig progressed it was clear that the graves fell into three approximate phases beginning in the late 18th century and ending with the closing of the graveyard in the very late 19th century. The first burials encountered had good skeletal preservation, but very little evidence of the coffins (except coffin nails). As they dug down further, they found the opposite situation. A high water table meant that wood remained – although in a very spongy state – but the bones had been leached away.
Incidental finds included large amounts of 19th century pottery, buttons, and clay pipes. The star find however was more spectacular. It was a small pottery bird whistle – the sort of thing we all had a plastic version of when we were younger. It was shaped like a bird, and it would have been filled with water, then when you blew down its tail it would produce a bird-like whistle. This turned out to be 14th century French and from the Santonge (sp?) area. The puzzle is, of course, to explain what it would be doing in a small Scottish village!
Third on the agenda was Julie Roberts of Glasgow University. She gave a report on the 56 sets of skeletal remains that she had been able to study. And the interesting point was made that she had done this work in the Church Hall, meaning that the remains (which have now been reburied in one large grave) never left the graveyard! Only two of the skeltons were complete enough to determine heights, and these were both males in the 5ft 9ins range. She was able to extrapolate some general information about health patterns from evidence of such diseases as osteoarthritis, and she also noted one strange wear pattern on the teeth of some of the individuals. This was a groove worn on the upper incisors, usually on the left side. This only appeared on the skeletons of the two later phases of burials, and it is reckonned that it may coincide with the introduction of the weaving trade, being caused by using the teeth to break threads.
The final speaker was Stephen Clancy of the Renfrewshire Local History Forum. He reported on a small exploratory dig done by the RLHF Archaeology section. Two residents of a housing scheme built on the lands of the former Craigends estate, once owned by the Cunningham family, had approached the Forum and asked them to investigate a spread of pottery beside a woodland pathway. A small trench was dug over a weekend in late 2003. The pottery seems to be part of a rubbish dump which will bear further examination, along with some strange built features which probably form part of the old estate. This seemed to be a story which will have further installments……
Altogether, an interesting and worthwhile afternoon, looking at the archaeology of one small village.