rns Cog” in honor of the region’s traditional wedding cog, an alcoholic drink passed around in a wooden vessel at marriage receptions.
“In appearance, the bowl is similar in shape to certain of the pottery vessels of the period, and in particular it looks like the sort of vessel we suspect to have been used for serving food or drink,” Carruthers explains in a statement. “Its round base makes you think that it would have been required to be constantly held when full, and perhaps used socially, passed around from hand to hand, person to person.”
The alderwood bowl measures nearly 12 inches across and features an outward-facing rim, globular body and rounded base. Although the bowl split at some point in its millenia-long history, it remained held together by the subterranean chamber’s muddy silts.
In addition to the bowl and hair, UHI archaeologists discovered an array of ancient artifacts at the Cairns site, from pieces of wood that mirror modern-day tent pegs to preserved plant fibers likely woven by human hands and a glass bead.
“There is still much work to do in The Well, and there are other amazing remains to be recovered from the silts there, as well as across the site,” the UHI blog states. “The excavations are ongoing and more waterlogged items are likely to be raised during that time. The next steps will be to conserve and assess the objects.”