A 2000 year old bakery.

The spit of land lying between the lower reaches of the River Ythan and the North Sea has been known as the Sands of Forvie since at least 1782. Surprising as it might seem, the vast sand dunes that now cover the area have all arrived in the last 2000 years or so. Before that the area supported a small population of humans who made their living from primitive farming and from what they could hunt and gather from the sea and estuary. This all came to an end when the sand arrived from the south. Over many 100s of years the sand moved north in giant dunes, gradually but progressively smothering the fertile soil.
Periodically, the wind blows away the sand from areas temporarily exposing the old ground level and human artifacts from the stone, bronze and iron ages. These include extensive areas of worked flints, huge shell middens, burial cairns, plough marks, and the foundations of large round-houses.
Today I came across this pink granite boulder lying on the old soil surface. It was lying near to a circular hut, probably from the iron age. The boulder has been worked and flattened to produce a simple saddle quern that was used to grind cereals into a rough flour. The grain was placed on the flattened surface and then ground with backwards and forwards movements of the smaller grinding stone. One can imagine the heavy quern being abandoned as the farmers fled, never to return, when a great sand storm engulfed their land and their home.