SERF blog

Day 20- Castle Craig

2011-08-25T13:16:00.000+01:00

Hi Christina here, student at Glasgow University. The time has come to pack up the site. Today is all about back-filling what we have managed to dig in the past 3 weeks, although we are able to leave the entrance way open as it will be used as the report is written up next week.
All the hard work has reaped its rewards, we have managed to find both the inner and outer walls, the entrance, an intramural chamber and many exciting finds within the walls of the structure on top of our hill.
But all good things must come to an end and the excavation was no exception. Hopefully we will be granted permission to revisit the site in the future if we recieve further funding for the project. There is still so much to learn from this site and information which is still waiting to be uncovered and that could give us amazing insight into the lowland hillforts and brochs in the area.
Until next time!

Day 19-Castle Craig

2011-08-25T13:03:00.000+01:00

Hello, Eva here again! I have been working at the hillfort for a while now after having been at Forteviot for the beginning of the dig. There wasn't much digging going on today, since there are not many days left and there is still so much recording to do, mainly section drawing and post-ex planning.
Steven, Christina, Dawn, Tessi, Collette, Cameron, Joss, Claire, Jennifer and I were all quietly sitting in our trenches with our drawing boards.
A nice addition to the day was a visit from 'Flying Scotscam'. This is a small remote-controlled flying device operated from the ground with a camera attatched which can take pictures of the site from an aerial perspective. It was quite the spectacle and after the camcopter had landed to much cheering and applause.
After a day of hard work the recording is nearly all completed, which is a good job as we begin backfilling tomorrow!

Day 18- Ben Effrey Hillfort

2011-08-25T12:53:00.000+01:00

Apologies for the delay but here are the final installments for the blog from the hillforts, Enjoy!

Day 18
Greetings from Tom at the high hillfort! Nearly there! Our lovely trench or 'Jeffrey' as he affectionately come to be known as, as it rhymes with 'Ben Effrey' gives us the namesake of 'Team Jeffrey'. Today we gained a new member, Jamie, who joined us from the main site at Forteviot and was very helpful in rolling a boulder downhill with us. The boulder was duly named Bob.
Cathy also found an enormous lump of slag which was wrapped in cellophane and originally christened 'baby slag' as you could carry it like a baby.
I hit natural underneath rampart 2 after a solid mornings mattocking. Cleared, photographed and started drawing the section. Tessa has also found the bottom of the rampart 1 and evidence for a wooden palisade. Go Team Jeffrey!

Finishing up in the Churchyard

2011-08-23T22:52:00.000+01:00

Friday 19/08/11

Hi there, I'm Andy. I'm kinda the homeless wastrel of SERF and have been

floating around ever since the Paddock trench got closed down a week ago. At
the moment I've been adopted by Meggen and the Churchyard posse who are
excavating around the eastern wall of the church. As you can see from the
pics below they have uncovered some really interesting features and it is
looking like we may be able to get a date for the earliest structure that
has been uncovered in the very near future.

As tomorrow is the last day of the project today has been a day of recording
at break neck speeds. Marco and Carol have done a sterling job of
surveying and recording the features that have been excavated along the
church wall with the different layers of building foundations. Nicola and
Paul have been finishing wee bits of work that needed doing and hastily
recording all that they can. Scotty has been busy in his teensy trench at
the northern most edge of the excavation drawing and carefully recording the
relationships between the different deposits of soil, stone and other
material that will allow us to create a narrative for this site from the
medieval period up to today. Whilst Meggen has been somehow turning all this
frenetic activity into a well oiled archaeological machine.

Recording of the stonework under the church

A lot of frantic digging and recording to finish on time

It wasn't all about recording today though. Over the course of the excavation many disarticulated human remains were discovered at the southernmost corner of the church, having been most likely moved there

during the construction of the church that is standing today. We also came across a number of unmarked burials from the medieval period. We felt that we had to reinter these remains in as dignified manner as possible. To this end I spent the morning constructing a cist to receive the remains and at midday the Reverend J Bruce Thomson gave a short service and committed the remains back to the earth from which they had been disturbed.

Stone cist awaiting it's contents

It was a tranquil and peaceful time with the majority of people working on the Forteviot dig present as well as a number of the local laity. After the reverend had gone however we were swiftly back to work racing against the clock, and seemingly against impending rain, to get everything recorded. As quickly as we measured and drew, and plotted and recorded however we were beaten by the clock, and a lot of hungry bellies. While we all headed back to base camp for tea Meggen stayed on valiantly working on getting the trench ready to be closed. As I write this people have headed back to work into the failing light so that we can build as full and rounded a picture of this part of Forteviot and Strathern as possible.

There is such good evidence for activity in this region stretching from the

Neolithic right through to the modern day that our understanding of this

area is extremely important if we are to fully understand Scotland and the

north of Britain and how it came to be as it is today.

Well it is nearly the end of this season's dig and we have a whole load of

data and finds to get analysing before we can get back to you with the

results of our work here over the last five years. I say 'our' work and by

that I mean all the staff of the SERF project, the students, both

undergraduate and postgraduate, of Glasgow and Aberdeen universities as well

as the students from farther afield and volunteers from a more local...context ;)

Here's to another five years of SERF and to the future of the past in

Scotland.

Saturday 20/08/11

Final day in the Churchyard today. Adrian's trench was all finished yesterday with the final recording of the many early medieval gravecuts completed and samples taken that will hopefully allow us to get some dating evidence for these graves. Today was all about the backfilling and thanks to a monumental effort from the churchyard team and their extended group of helpers this was all finished by early afternoon...no mean feat considering this was the largest and deepest trench dug in Forteviot.

The 'big' trench with its gravecuts and postholes

Trench dancing!

Over by the church there was still much frantic recording ongoing...just too many interesting features in this trench. Under the church building we have uncovered many different courses and types of stone foundations. Some are re-used earlier stone for the foundation of the present church building with others being possibly even older in-situ foundations for a medieval building. There is also evidence of a small structure that came out from the east end of the church with clay bonded walls. What this may have been has been the topic of much intellectual debate leading to one senior site director taking a mattock to the wall to establish that the structure was in fact an add on to the building. All of this was being done while still trying to record and clean up the area for final photographs but never the less we persevered and finished up by late afternoon, leading to an all hands on deck backfilling session which was completed in a record couple of hours before a well deserved end of dig BBQ back at Strathallan.

Final look at the church trench with all of it's complicated stratigraphy

Well done to all the Churchyard team over the last 3 weeks!

Nicola

Final day at Haly Hill

2011-08-23T01:33:00.000+01:00

Haly Hill, 20th August

Well here we are already on our last full day on site at Haly Hill! Time flies when you're having fun they say, and I think we've definitely had a great three weeks here.

Today was a quiet day on site - with most of the team off helping in the epic backfilling efforts at the other trenches, there were only four of us here. With most of the excavation finished, today was a day for finishing off our careful recording of the site. We were all kept busy with drawing, planning, measuring, levelling, context sheets and photography.

And what fantastic archaeology we have to record! At the end of our dig here, we've found out so much about the story of Haly Hill. To summarise: in trench 4, we were able to see how the longhouse recorded on the first edition maps of the site had been altered over the years, being plastered, then rebuilt into a smaller roughcast cottage, complete with the fireplace we found - grate and all. We can see the whole history of the house, right up to when it burnt down. From trench 1, we can even see that the trackway running along the end of the house was rebuilt 2 or 3 times. Trench 2 told us an equally interesting story. Having dug down through what appears to have been the floor of a byre, we found that this building had previously been used as a smithy, judging from the copious amounts of metalworking slag and iron objects we found. Continuing our excavations below this however, we discovered a surface which may be the disturbed floor of an earlier building - complete with pivot stone for the hinge of a door. The pottery we found suggests this may be a seventeenth-century structure.
So it's been a busy and fascinating time here at Haly Hill - made even better by a team of cheerful and enthusiastic students. And so, with the return of the heroic backfillers from the other trenches, off we go to end the day with a well-deserved celebratory barbecue!
Rebecca

Haly Hill site

Fireplace feature from the building in trench 4

Some nice paved flooring

Day 17 Castle Craig

2011-08-18T21:03:00.000+01:00

Hello Marco here, I have often heard people saying that there is no good weather for excavations. Well, first day excavating at SERF this year on Castle Craig hillfort and it was near perfect, apart from a few drops of rain around noon.

Work went well and the find of the day was undoubtedly a blackened stone vessel with a handle and rim decoration along with some other goods and much evidence of burning. This was found in the entrance way to the structure on top of the hill, hidden under a large slab of stone. A great day to begin, I hope that the rest of my time here proves as interesting and that the sun keeps shining!

Day 16- Castle Craig Hillfort

2011-08-18T21:02:00.000+01:00

Day 16 Castle Craig Hillfort

Greetings and salutations to all and sundry on what may be regarded as a monumental day at this years SERF project! My name is Cameron and I am a 3rd Year student at the University of Glasgow...but enough of inconsequential details like that! Today Castle Craig Hillfort yielded not one but several spectacular finds from the ample trench. Not even poor weather conditions could dampen our spirits, which were dazzled by the finds.

Firstly Christina, A new edition to ‘Team Awesome’, as we have come to be referred to, found a 10cm bronze pin. Shaped to a point at one end and a hole at the thicker end, it has been speculated that the artefact could have been part of a Pejanular Brooch. Unfortunately, no other evidence was found to corroborate this as of yet, but it would be fair to say this proved a rather exciting first day on site for Christina!

Could this day get any better i hear you ask. It only took half an hour. It seemed I had only just returned to the mine shaft im digging, when I was excitedly summoned to the summit of the hillfort again..

Throughout the day there were many other finds, lots of recording was required and excitement was running high on the trench. For one and all a memorable day at Castle Craig.

Apologies for the lack of photos in the past few days, the uploading does not seem to be working but hopefully this will be sorted soon!!

Day 18 - Haly Hill

2011-08-18T20:58:00.002+01:00

Hello bloggers from Strathallan! My name is Luis, I'm a Spanish student and I'm going to tell you how today was working in the Haly Hill trenches. During the morning most of us were drawing plans. It was a bit tricky but we managed to do it fine thanks to Rebecca and Kevin, they supervised and helped us all the way through. Apart from that the digs in Trench 2 and 4 (the farms of the 18th century) were going on yet we didn't find anything really interesting. Instead we focused on measuring levels and taking pictures. I think that we wont be able to do anything more significant to the project. Time flies and the day after tomorrow is the end of the dig.

This afternoon was a more relaxed part of the day due to the rain. It was so hard and we had to stop and spend part of the time in the Forteviot village hall.

Definitely days are starting to be different. It seems that everything has a farewell atmosphere. I can't believe that the 3 weeks of excavation are almost finished. It was a great experience that I'm sure we will not forget.

Bye to everybody!!!

Planning, planning and more planning!

Who knew levelling was so much fun!

Day 17 – Churchyard

2011-08-17T20:57:00.000+01:00

Hello, Stuart here to fill you in on activities in the churchyard trench. Things got off to a bad start today as our self-elected leader Trish had gone AWOL again. Fortunately Adrian was able to deputise adequately until she returned after the tea break to sort things out.

After many days of what seemed like fruitless digging we are now actually down to some interesting archaeology. Maybe not quite as interesting as the Roman pot found the other day, but still, better than nothing. We are currently in the process of excavating several potential early medieval graves. One of which is almost definitely a grave as Ron found teeth and other bone in his feature where the head would have been. Postholes around the graves have also been uncovered which may be related.

In the North half of the trench we have found a feature which Adrian is “99%” sure is a pictish round barrow, but he has been wrong before…more than once. There is a grave on the north side of the barrow that cuts into a possible prehistoric feature. So finally the trench is beginning to look exciting.

Ron and Adrian excavating out some of the graves

Day 16 – Haly Hill

2011-08-17T19:49:00.004+01:00

Hi my name is Juan from Spain and I have been excavating today in the Haly Hill trenches. We are getting into a really old context, possibly medieval. This is really exciting because it is the closest we can get to Kenneth MacAlpin’s Palace. It has been really interesting as well because the metallic tool we found in Trench 2 has been identified as a scythe. I found particularly funny the fact that I had to draw two plans and I hate drawing plans. It has been ironic that I found a nail that was recorded as a small find but other things that I found which I thought were more interesting haven’t received the same attention.

Day 14 - Open Day

2011-08-17T19:49:00.002+01:00

Hi everyone, I’m Joss, here to fill you in on today’s events at the SERF open day in Forteviot. This event proves popular every year, and 2011 was no exception.

Once everyone was briefed on the plan for the day, we started setting up the trenches and village hall, ready for visitors. We had various finds from this year and previous years on display, with students on hand to answer any questions. The Women’s Institute were there to serve coffee, and strawberries and cream fresh from Dunning. My family were among the first visitors to arrive, so I gave them a ‘test run’ of the guided tour. Other students in each trench helped me out with any questions asked. When we returned to the hall, it was busy with more visitors.

I took my family to Castle Craig, the site I have been digging. Other members of the hillfort team brought their friends and family too. Everyone was shown round the various features of this dramatic site, and Heather showed us an exciting new find; a suspected Iron Age oil lamp! Just as we arrived, Tessa produced a fragment of quern stone from the main trench. Once everyone was shown round the site, we headed back to Forteviot. It was near the end of the day, but a few more visitors were looking for a tour. Danny, Cameron and I showed them around the trenches in the village. When the open day ended, we had a SERF barbeque behind the village hall, in the great Scottish sun. A fantastic end to another fantastic day on the field school!

Day 13 at Ben Effrey.

2011-08-17T19:48:00.002+01:00

Daniel here representing Team Jeffrey, a power of work has been done up the hill since the last blog entry from us.

Vlad was missing from the team so it was just Adriana, Cathy, Tessa, Tom and I.

I was working on the back from the ditch. Trying to uncover the bottom layer of soil, going through the slope up to the ditch. I would call it a lesson in power mattocking!

Adriana was half excavation planning the bottom and middle ramparts, with Tessa and Cathy taking a section through the middle rampart, moving a sizeable amount of stone!

Tom was uncovering some more stone at the top rampart, uncovering a level of clay soil which we think could connect through a line of stone behind the top rampart.

Best news of the day came from the area Cathy was working, uncovering a large portion of slag, so we could possibly have an iron smelt, or more likely a domestic hearth. Find No. 3, delighted

We had an impromptu tour of the site today for a group of hill walkers, who had seen the geophysical survey being done, so it was nice for some outside eyes to see Jeffrey, and the power of work we have done. Hope to see some of you up the hill, laters!

The Last Day on the Manse Trench! (17.08.11)

2011-08-17T19:02:00.001+01:00

Hi Lewis here. And so, as a new day dawns on Forteviota drastic improvement in the weather and our spirits brought a pleasant return to work on the tench at the Manse. For myself, having just returned to Forteviot for the final work, the extension to the trench wrought no rewards. No structures, features or finds arose. However, as the final stages of excavation are readied work continues.

Fiona set about excavating a small post hole and sought to reveal the exact character of the pit containing metal working debris. Robbie and Ewan lifted part of the wall and all the paving to seek what lies underneath.

Although thus far no substantial or enlightening evidence has arisen today, as ever and as the last few days of the 2011 season of the SERF project continue no doubt a few surprises remain to be uncovered.

Update! The excavation of the Manse trench has today finished with no new finds. Tomorrow it will be back filled and our best efforts made to return the Manse lawn to normal.

Day 13 - Churchyard

2011-08-13T22:00:00.000+01:00

Hi , Trish here from the churchyard trench, I’m back to work after poor weather and walkover survey kept me away . Its not a moment too soon either cos they don’t seem to know what to do without me. So, Cats been working on what still looks to be a grave, Ildy and me were working on opposite ends of what we thought to be a related feature . Guess what , turns out its not! We were thinking possible foundations of a timber building, now looks more like postholes. Meanwhile we put Adrian in a little hole up at the top end with a bucket and a spoon and he was happy as Larry.

Archaeologists utilise all sorts of tools!

When he did make a fuss we threw him something to eat and he was placated. The North west step had to go its getting in the way of some features so that kept Ron busy for a bit. Unfortunately the loss of the expertly crafted “Scotts Stairs “ has now left us with only the poorly thrown together mud pile of Kenny and Adrian as our only means of escape. Things could get very difficult. Most of the rest of the day was spent taking photographs and recording and getting ready for the open day tomorrow.

Trowelling over the trench

Day 12-Castle Craig Hillfort

2011-08-13T21:53:00.000+01:00

Hi there,

My name is Tessi and as most others here I study Archaeology at Glasgow University.

Today marked another exciting day at Castle Craig. The weather oddly did not conform to the forecast which had predicted rain. All we had to deal with was a light drizzle – and that we can do. Especially after the short trip to Trespass yesterday.

I was placed in the trench with the suspected inner wall of the structure. Claire was with me and we had the mission to bring the area in front of it to a level with the rest of the trench. It was a very satisfying experience to work around a clearly defined structure and both of us were determined to finish the task by the end of the day.

We soon noticed a slight but perfect curve to the wall which Heather used to look for a potential centre of the structure. It thankfully missed the spoil heap by a few meters! A helpful discovery when thinking about the next few steps in the excavation. The others have found a few big stones in Trench 2 which have appeared under a layer of charcoal rich soil. This should be interesting and I hope it will turn out to be another lovely part of the wall. Fingers crossed.

Tomorrow, we will also clear away some of the huge stones in front of our inner wall and we are anticipating it. A simple surface would suffice to make me happy, I think... treasure of some kind is of course also always appreciated.

People are already whispering about what lies beneath our feet – but it has not been branded yet. There is still plenty of room for surprises and contradictions. As always.

Day 12 - Churchyard

2011-08-12T20:50:00.000+01:00

Hi, Nicola here again for an update on what's been happening in the Church trench over the last few days. Unfortunately the weather's not been kind to us so we've not been able to spend as much time on site as we would like but despite this we've made quite a lot of progress at the Church. The flagstones that we had found last week are reckoned to be the foundations for the stairway to a Laird's Loft that was situated at the East end of the present Church building before renovations in the 19th Century. These stair foundations were filled in with a lot of sandstone and mortar rubble that has at last now all been removed. Much blood, sweat and tears were used up in moving some of the larger stones! Getting rid of all this rubble has allowed us to see the wall of an earlier church building with a very nice plinth (angled stone layer) which is a feature of medieval churches. There has been a lot of excitement all round at finding this and even more so when we continued down and found that there are more courses of masonry underneath the plinth level which would have been underground when the church building was standing...crypt possibly?! That would probably be to much to ask for, however, near the end of today we did get down far enough to find what may possibly be a layer of mortared stone from an even earlier building. Tomorrow will hopefully bring answers as to what these stones are so watch this space!

The plinth and wall of an earlier church building appearing

Day 12 - Haly Hill

2011-08-12T20:16:00.000+01:00

I'm Steven and I've been at Haly Hill since the start. Today's weather has allowed us to make substantial progress here. Trench 4 is where it's all happening today. I've been cleaning up the suspected Drain at the byre end of the building. But, the real action is in the interior where a hearth has been clearly identified. There is an obvious hearth-stone sitting on a lot of burnt wood remains, which is presumably the remains of a wooden floor surface, but could also be whats left of a wooden roof which burned and fell into the building.

Cleaning back around the hearth

The trenches at Haly Hill continue to be a hot-spot for local wildlife, with a frog in the trench this morning to add to the hedgehogs of last week. Proving that the attentions of both man and beast are clearly focussed on Haly Hill (where all the real archaeology is taking place!)

House structure in trench 4

Day 7 - The Village Hall

2011-08-12T20:05:00.000+01:00

Keen Drawers: Justine, Tom and Leanne.

Fiona again! Today found all the students crammed into the village hall due to heavy rain and flood warnings which made the trenches unworkable. However we didn't sit about doing nothing. This awful weather gave us the chance to catch up on processing the finds that had been accumulating in the finds tent during the week. Most students were given the chance to get hands on with the finds by cleaning them under Phd student Allsion's supervison. Other acticities included photography and i handled the drawing practice. Prof. Steven Driscoll also organised a trip to see the famous Duplin Cross for those who hadn't. It was a nice relaxing day inside after lots of heavy work in the outdoors during the week!

Day 6 - The Manse

2011-08-12T19:51:00.000+01:00

In photo: Fiona, Prof. Brown and Eva.

Hi - Fiona here again! I'm now helping to supervise on the Manse trench and today proved to be a successful one with two pieces of medieval pottery found in the latest context and what appears to be the remains of a bowl furnace which would most likely have been used in medieval smith work. As the trench gets deeper our wall is now clearly more substansial and may hopefully prove to be more than a 'HaHa.' We also had a visit from Glasgow University's Proffesor of Scottish History, David Broun who was keen to see field archaeology in practice and have a go himself.

In photo: Eva keeps at the mattocking while Ewan sets up a site grid for planning the position of our finds.

Day 10- Craig Castle Hillfort

2011-08-11T09:57:00.001+01:00

Hi my name is Claire, I am a 3rd year student at Glasgow University. First day back on the hill after a couple of days and things have changed a lot. The rain was pouring down from the start of the day but we got off to a good start with a pep talk from the trench supervisor, Heather.

We had a new addition to the trench, Andy and everyone else was back in full force and back to their individual areas on at the site. The outer wall of the building feature in Trench 1 is appearing nicely which I find particularly exciting as I did the pre-ex plan and we were sure we could see something visible even then.

I was put into the corner area mattocking to bring it down to the same level. Spirits were low before tea break as everyone was soaked to the skin, I also felt like I was not making much progress and all that was keeping me going was the thought of the Mars Bar in my pocket!

Tea break saw us all squeezed into the tent, Charlie had brought some treats and everyones spirits rose. Heather made the decision that we should throw in the trowel at lunchtime so we all felt we should try our hardest for the last bit. As we appeared from the tent the high hillfort crew arrived with reinforcements. Tessa jumped into my trench and got to work straight away on mattocking. As we took the stale tumble off the site it gave new life to the excavations and a picture of what used to stand here became revealed.

Although some people wanted to stay longer the decision had been made to break at lunch, and as we know in Scotland a verbal contract is legally binding! We also found out that our team of diggers had successfully stayed out the longest, congratulations everyone!

Day 10

2011-08-11T09:42:00.000+01:00

Hi, I'm Lesley and I am studying History and Archaeology at Glasgow University. I began my day at Haly Hill by helping to dig up the new extension to Trench 4. However, I was only there for about five minutes as Professor Driscoll gave us the choice of digging at Trench 4 or to go and start processing finds. It took me about a second to decide to go and process finds because you have to process finds in the village hall and today it was pouring down outside! Happy at the thought of not having my fingers fall off because of the cold, I headed to the village hall by myself where I spent the rest of the day washing the finds. My choice of leaving for the village hall seemed to have been the right choice as by the first tea break everybody came back soaking. It was then decided that for the rest of the day everybody was to process the finds at the village hall because the rain was not going to stop, and the trenches were now becoming pools. We had fun processing the finds, as the picture below shows, and it gave us a chance to see what all the trenches were finding. Today a piece of neolithic flint was found at the Manse, so tomorrow we will hopefully discover something just as old.

Washing finds in the comfort of the dry, warm village hall

2011-08-11T09:37:00.000+01:00

Day 9-Ben Effrey

Hi my name is Vlad, I am a foreign exchange student from Romania. Today was beautiful and sunny outside, with the long awaited warmth, some breeze and no traces of rain – a bit for everyone, really. Team Effrey (or occasionally Jeffrey), consisting of Tessa, Cathy, Tom, Vlad, Dan and Adriana (who was absent today because of field walking duties) along with Lorraine, made its glorious entry in the hillfort after a 20 minutes climb in a mesmerizing landscape. The sheep had taken advantage of our empty site in the past two days and rudely left their characteristic marks all over. Despite this we set off to work right away.

Unfortunately we didn’t have any finds today – it’s not that we are unluckier than everybody else, just that the site we are digging is prehistoric, you know, so it is likely to be more than one-metre deep to reach traces of human presence from the Iron Age. While Lorraine and Cathy were doing the topographic survey of the site, the rest of us mattocked and towelled in different parts of the trench in order to uncover the three ramparts of the fort and also record the development of the site over time (tumbled stones, reason for abandonment, possible destruction etc.). Around noon, we had three visitors – a father with his two small sons – who were passing by and were curious to find out our mission up there. Hmm apart from that there were no other notable events, but we don’t need any in order to enjoy ourselves while trying to bring a great contribution to our archaeological project :-)

Day 9

2011-08-11T09:30:00.000+01:00

Appologies for the lack of posts over the last few days...technical problems!

In the Churchyard

Hi my name is Ron and I’m in the Churchyard again today. We began with a power-trowel of the spoil created by the rain and removing the bulk. After some discussion (and a brief interruption to go move some heavy paving stones over by the church) it was decided that the second half of the trench would be opened after tea-break. Removing the soil from the rest of the trench took the rest of the day, and it was fairly arduous, but we finished in the end. I'm rather proud of how much soil we shifted in the course of only a few hours. Tomorrow, we will give it a light trowel and hopefully the features we were expecting to find (Adrian's Ditch, and a few other places that seem to be sort of regular cuts) will be there.

Pondering the 'Big Trench'

Day 6 - Haly Hill

2011-08-06T20:42:00.000+01:00

Hi all, Kayleigh here reporting for Haly Hill, which got off to a great start on day 6 with the sun splitting the sky. First on the agenda was an extension to Trench 4 (which now holds a fantastic cobble floor). The boys took the hard job of troweling some stones and left the girls to the easy task of mattocking the rest of the new trench, with the usual laughing and joking from the group.

Cobble floor in Trench 4

After lunch the small extension of Trench 4 has grew into a 7m x 4m beast, which meant the group had our first shot at de-turfing the nettle patch. Our tip, jumping on your spade as if it’s a po-go will get the job done but be careful you don’t cause yourself any ‘male related’ injuries. Elsewhere on site the lovely ladies in trench 2 found another coin, a great find, but the greatest discovery of the day was seeing even some top dogs in the hierarchy of Haly Hill breaking a sweat (see below).

The Manse Trench Day 5

2011-08-05T20:25:00.000+01:00

Today has been a good and productive day in the tench of the Manse's backyard. Since the trench is located on the lawn of a private property, we try very hard to keep everything neat and tidy using loads of plastic and planks.
Yesterday we had uncovered a stone feature in the southern side of the trench. It consisted of stones and boulders and was running all along the edge of the trench, into which it disappeared. It didn't seem to be a wall because the stones were not neatly stacked and there was no distinctive facing. Geophysics and an 18th century map of the Manse's backyard show linear features, and on the map it appears to be a garden path.
To find out more about this feature, it was decided today to extend the trench south. That meant more deturfing and more mattocking, until we reached the level in which the stone feature was standing.
Although we have uncovered numerous finds, none of them are really remarkable. Most of it is modern material, consisting of pieces of pottery, glass and coal. Among the more interesting finds are an iron knife (with missing handle) and some herbivore molars, possibly sheep.
When the other side of the feature was uncovered, it became clear that this could not have been a paved pathway, it is too narrow for that. After we uncovered more, we were surprised to see that the other (southern) side was very neatly stacked and had a clear facing.

Close up of the wall, showing the north side on the right. The south side is obviously much neater and has a clear facing.

View of the trench with stone feature, the modern Manse in the background. On the left there is Robbie, a retired topographical surveyor that volunteers for the SERF project, and to the right Eva Hopman (author of this blog entry).

It's possible that the feature might have been an 18th century retaining garden wall with a path leading next to it. The loose boulders and stones on the northern side of the wall could have allowed better drainage into the garden soil. For now though, this feature is as good as any! We will uncover more of the wall in the next days and hopefully find out exactly what it's function was.

Written by Eva Hopman, 22 year old intern at the Archaeology department of Glasgow University

2011-08-05T20:12:00.000+01:00

Day 5 at the Church

Hi, My name is Ildiko and today I have been excavating in the Churchyard. In the morning we cleaned out trench 1, took some measurements, allocated coordinates to the trench edges, made a plan drawing of a cut in one of the contexts and filled out context sheets.

The main part of the day, however, involved slowly troweling back layer after layer of an extended sondage that had previously been dug in the trench. In the process of this we came across a cobbled looking surface. Hopeful, we kept going, excited to see what this feature would show to be. Eventually, it turned out to be a very complex and complicated array of features (cobbles, gravel, stones set in clay, irregular pebbles and a rather stoneless area which we assumed could be a fill). This startled us greatly and we decided to take some photographs before we investigated the matter further.

After a lot of speculation and confusion we laid out some string over part of the cobbled and the “empty” area and started excavating. The idea was to see the relationship between these two features. In the meanwhile two members of our team troweled back the rest of the area hoping to find some promising clues beneath the other features, but all we found was natural soil and no finds whatsoever. So we stay bamboozled.

Trench 1 at the end of the day

2011-08-05T19:56:00.000+01:00

Day 5 – 5th of August 2011

Hi! My name is Christina and I am just about to enter into Junior Honours Archaeology (Third year) at the University of Glasgow.

Today has been a very exciting day for the Castle Craig Hillfort crew, as, after a long time digging and de-turfing, we are starting to find evidence!!! There was a bit of joyful dancing and whooping involved – nothing more exciting than progress! We were lucky enough to have some fantastic weather after yesterday’s torrential rain – so this really helped speed up things.

Myself and Cameron opened up Trench 2 more fully, which is situated over the ramparts within sheltered rock clusters, and we have managed to mattock this trench to death in a bid to catch up with Trench 1. As it is filled up with lots of rocks (a lovely endearing feature of the Hillfort), we are aiming to get down to the bedrock and (hopefully) find some interesting artefacts or structures along the way.

Meanwhile, up in the main trench, Colette found our first significant find: a thumbnail scrapper. You can see that someone has chipped around the edge of the stone to create a blade. Our in-house prehistory expert Dr Brophy believes it may indicate Bronze Age activity! Cue more dancing and whooping!

We also have some evidence of a post-hole in our rampart trench, thereby indicating some kind of wooden post used, perhaps within a structure. Things are certainly heating up and we are looking forward to investing this further tomorrow!

2011-08-05T19:51:00.000+01:00

Day 4- Ben Effrey

Greetings from the high hillfort! I’m Tom and I’m entering honours Archaeology at Glasgow this year. I have been assigned to what some may want to call the most hardcore trench, at a probable Iron Age fort on Ben Effrey, a hill overlooking Auchterarder. We have opened up a 30m x 2m trench cutting through the three visible ramparts and over an outer ditch. Today was a wet and windy day, and the summit was misted up when we gained the summit. The rain fell and fell and fell and our trench turned into a bog briefly….

Never mind the weather, we got a load more mattocking done and the mist lifted enough to take this picture! We are having a great time up here, I hope you all get a chance to come up and see us sometime….

Day 4 - Haly Hill

2011-08-04T21:26:00.000+01:00

Heya, my name's Leah and I'm studying Classical Civilisation and Archaeology at Glasgow. It was an exciting morning at Haly Hill as when we arrived on site we were met by two rather unusual finds in Trench 1 and Trench 5. A couple of adorable hedgehogs had decided to take an evening stroll along the site and fell into the trenches. Rebecca was their saviour while the rest of us were thinking of making them our mascot.

Trench 4 was most exciting as we have found, to quote the proffessionals, a pre-post medieval wall. I discovered a clay Victorian doll missing it's head and feet. I think the owner of this toy was a little sadistic. The rain made excavating a little more difficult but on the plus side, no one can complain if you're covered in dirt, we're all in the same boat! Trench 4 is being extended tomorrow so the excitement about what we may discover just keeps building.

Day 4 - The Paddock Trench

2011-08-04T19:24:00.000+01:00

The Trench Progresses: Jamie in green, Andie in black, Carol in lilac and Fiona in red.

Hey, Jamie here. I’m about to enter into junior honours Archaeology at the University of Glasgow. This is my first time attending the SERF field school and so far I’m learning lots and having a great time, even in the rain. Today in the paddock we continued to strip back the orange brown context layer. We didn’t find as much as we had done in the topsoil, but that was to be expected. However, something interesting did pop up; another piece of pottery. We showed this to Dr Ewan Campbell, and along with the other interesting piece that Alison found yesterday, he came to the conclusion that they may be from the same item, and also that they may be Roman! Whilst this went on Fiona continued to excavate her sondage deeper and she found a few pieces of medieval pottery. The weather could have been better, but all in all a very productive day.

2011-08-04T19:18:00.000+01:00

Churchyard – Day 3

Hi my name is Scott from New Jersey. Over the past few days my team and I have been excavating the centre of the churchyard at Forteviot. In a short time we have made a good deal of progress, digging about 1-1.5 metres into the ground. So far we have found mostly modern pottery sherds, bits of metal, glass, pipe pieces and bone fragments. We still need to dig deeper in order to access a medieval layer. Today we enjoyed good weather, a rare treat in Forteviot, and decided that our gravel area of our trench was indeed a proper feature. This feature could possibly be a sort of path through our excavation area, however we are still deforming this. We have had some luck with our find of green glaze potsherds, which indicate that we are getting closer to our goal. Most of the day was spent mattocking, trowelling and clearing the loose soil from the trench. While it is hard work at times the results are rewarding. The section that was taken of the gravel path revealed nothing underneath indicating that it was cut at some point. Tomorrow’s excavation promises to reveal further finds as we continue digging, hopefully providing us with some sort of material from the medieval period.

Lesley recording the gravel path feature in Trench 1

Flagstones of the earlier church building in Trench 2

Over in trench 2 by the church building Megan and her team have found flagstones outlining what looks to be the walls of an earlier church building with lots of rubble.

2011-08-03T21:38:00.000+01:00

Day 3 - 3rd August 2011

Second day up at Castle Craig Hillfort which brought us to the end of the de-turfing and a rare glimpse of sunshine.

We worked hard all morning in our 3 teams of mattock wielding, turf pulling and spade cutting trio’s and the rest of the turf was cleared just after lunchtime, job well done!

After lunch the sun came out from behind a cloud and we all set about cleaning the trench of grass and any loose. Everyone worked hard and the area was cleared in time to take our first photographs of the trench.

Although it may not seem like much when it is written down seeing the turf finally removed and the area cleared ready to get to work tomorrow gave me a real sense of achievement.

Good day today, excited to see what tomorrow brings.

2011-08-03T21:35:00.001+01:00

Day 2 – 2nd August

Hi my name is Charlie, I am a 4th year student at Glasgow University studying Archaeology and taking part in the SERF project this year as a supervisor. Second day of this years SERF and a brief introduction to the excavations and the beginning of the 2011 season of investigation of Forteviot and the surrounding area. This year the SERF project is concentrating on two hillforts in the nearby area as well as the excavations in Forteviot itself. Both hillforts are suspected to be Iron Age and reside in the parish of Dunning. The lower of the two hillforts called Castle Craig is accessible by a rough road and is being directed by Heather James. The higher of the two, Ben Effrey, is accessed from the same point but requires a 45 minute walk or an off-road vehicle to access it. This hillfort will be directed by Tessa Poller. By opening various trenches across the Castle Craig site, to include ramparts and the enclosure at the summit, it is hoped that we can determine if there is any evidence remaining of occupation from the Iron Age or any time after its original construction. The site was originally looked at in the 1970’s by John Sherriff when it came under threat from nearby quarrying. The discoveries at the time included several stone slab covered pits and several small finds including a piece of a jet armlet.

At the higher site at Ben Effrey hillfort the plan is to open 3 trenches, one of these stretching down over all the ramparts and ditches. The aim of both of the hillforts is to deduce a chronology of the each site which can also be compared with other hillforts in the area and build up a coherent picture of the area.

It is hoped that there will be many more exciting finds to come from both of these sites! We will keep you updated as the events unfold.

2011-08-03T21:29:00.002+01:00

Churchyard

Hi, my name’s Nicola. I’m a 4th year student at Glasgow University and am assisting supervisors Megan and Adrian in the Churchyard of St Andrew’s Church in Forteviot village. Two trenches have been opened up in the churchyard, one at the south eastern corner of the church building hoping to find evidence of earlier church structures, and the other in the only unused area of the churchyard itself. Day one was spent marking out trench 1 in the churchyard and de-turfing this by hand and then on to day 2 where the topsoil and underlying subsoil from this trench were removed with a lot of hard labour, mattocking and shovelling in some seriously wet weather! In trench one by the end of day two we had shifted a fair amount of soil and had begun to see the beginning of a possible gravel feature in the south east corner of the trench so it will be good to see where this leads.

Trench 2 by the church building was opened on day two around an area on the wall where some of the foundation stones for the wall were thought to be earlier in origin than the rest of the building. Just under the surface here the team found a row of stones running under the wall which could relate to the earlier building and also signs of other stones lying out from the church wall so we’re looking forward to clearing this area up and seeing what the stones reveal. All in all a good first couple of days with the promise of lots more interesting things to discover!

Welcome to SERF 2011!

2011-08-03T21:24:00.000+01:00

This year we are mainly based in the village of Forteviot and have trenches open in the Church Yard, Halle Hill, Manse Garden and Paddock. Our main objective in the village is to find the ellusive Pictish Palace where the first recored King of Scotland, Kenneth McAlpine, is reputed to have died. Archaeologists Tessa Poller and Heather James are up on the hillforts of Castle Craig and Ben Effrey hoping to gain a window into life in the Iron Age.

The Paddock Trench, Day 3

Above: Steven and Supervisor Alison get stuck in to mattocking!

Hi there, my name's Fiona. I'm a third year going on fourth year student at the University of Glasgow and i'm helping to supervise the Paddock trench. So far our team has deturfed and stripped back the upper topsoil to reveal an orange brown context flecked with coal. The finds from this level have mostly been from the 17th century onwards and include glass and pottery fragments, but we have found at least one piece of medieval pottery and we hope there is more to come! Other interesting finds have included stamped pipe bowls and a small perforated cone of copper alloy with mineralised wood inside. Today i continued to excavate a sondage i'd been working on which runs along the edge of the trench. This will be taken deeper tomorrow, hopefully giving us a better idea of the site's startigraphy. So far the weather has been good with not too much rain and this afternoon we had brilliant sunshine.

DAY 13 in the trenches - 17th August 2010

2010-08-20T07:30:00.000+01:00

Forteviot

Trench 5

Hey, my name is Chelsea and I have been working on trench 5A (the sexy trench). Today it was pretty sunny, so working was rather easy, for once. In the morning I finished trowelling one of the inner ditch terminals of the palisaded enclosure. Once this was done I took photographs and drew a section drawing. After this I was asked to start trowelling in one of the sections of the triple cist which was really exciting. I had found large lumps of quartz and a small bone fragment. I was told that one of the cists from last year contained a lot of quartz too, and this also had a dagger inside, so things are looking very promising. The section that Heather had excavated had a body stain which may be the bent leg or elbow of the person who was buried here. Hopefully, we will find some other treasure shortly. While excavating, all the soil went into sample bags – I feel sorry for Gert as he has to sample them all! Today a glass bead was also found. Ewan said that it is most probably Norse, however, since it was found on the spoil heap we do not know where it came from. That’s all the news from our trench today.

Trench 7

Work resumed on trench seven following the festivities of our only day off from the relentless onslaught of archaeological exhilaration. Last week culminated on Sunday with the annual open day and barbecue at Forteviot town hall and let it be known that a good time was had by all with an excess of sun and fizzy pop providing the fuel for much banter.

Yet again I found myself slowly moving backwards through time. From my first week risking the curse of the Pictish square barrows, and the mystery lung disorder it brought, to a couple of action packed days at the hillfort. It was there that I had the delightful task of topographic surveying through some pounding gorse and bramble bushes and excavating the bottom layer of the main ramparts of the central fort. Most excellent.

After moving from the Pictish period in the historic era to the probable Iron Age fort at Law of Dumbuils today I moved back a few thousand years into trench seven, and quickly found myself knee deep in the Neolithic with my very own post hole.

I would just like to take an aside to mention the sheer scale of the palisaded enclosure, which has incited the full wrath of my archaeological imagination. It is easy to lose sight of the bigger picture when confronted with an amorphous soily blob. Trying to untangle the pedantry of pedology or the confusion of corresponding contexts often obscures the ultimate goal of the excavation process, which is to enlighten us on the purpose and process of creation of structures and monuments that have been recalaimed by the natural and fallen to attrition and decay.

Each post had a probable width of half a metre, and stood anywhere from five to fifteen metres, driven into the ground by hand to a depth of upto two metres. The fact hundreds of these posts were arranged to form a vast palisaded enclosure thousands of years ago which stretched out two hundred and fifty square metres cannot fail to arouse some form of curiosity and awe in the mind of the archaeologist, who granted are a special breed of people.

Anyway, the day progressed steadily as most features being dug were finished, the series of gigantic postholes bottoming out at approximately one and a half metres, which considering my own is less than a third of this means I have my work cut out to finish it in time. It would appear that we have a variety of possible interpretations for the birth and death of each of the palisade post holes. One appears to have been burnt in situ, another rotted away and one even forcibly ripped out. Hopefully as work reaches its finishing stages in the next few days we can edge ever closer to an understanding of this awe inspiring monument and the people who built it.

Lewis Prentice

DAY 11 & 12 - 14th & 15th August

2010-08-16T17:17:00.000+01:00

Hello - minor technical difficulties halted blog updates...but here are some news from the past couple of days

August 14th

Forteviot

Yesterday we had a visit from the FlyingScotsCam people, who took aerial photos of the site using a flying mini-drone. The unmanned octocopter looks like something from Blade Runner (it weighs less than two kilos, runs on electric batteries and has eight rotors to stabilise it), and enables the operator to take pictures from a variety of heights and angles. It has an integral GIS system which enables it to hover over particular points, and it even talks to the operator. There is also a live visual feed to hand-held control panel, enabling instant viewing. Mike Smith, the director of FlyingScotsCam, took some great shots of my site, the Pictish square barrow cemetery. This is an exciting new technology which allows very quick vertical coverage of archaeological sites, and could be used to produce plans of sites as well as showing the landscape setting and the relationship between different parts of large sites such as the SERF project.

Ewan Campbell

Trench 5A

My name is Heather and I am co-directing Trench 5A with Meggan. Today saw the fruits of many days labour by the students and volunteers. Now that Carmen the geophysist has taken all her soil samples, we were able to remove the soil over the central area within the double ditched enclosure. At first a few stones set on edge looked like the side slabs of a single Bronze Age cist, but as more soil was removed it turned out to have three compartments, which is quite unusual. Hopefully this will be excavated over the next few days and we will see whether there are any remains of a body or artefacts buried with the body, pottery or perhaps another dagger.

The outer ditch has been excavated with a few deep slots and we think that it was dug for a large timber palisade. The inner ditch is not so deep but also supported timber posts. A terminal of this inner ditch may be where there was an entrance.

Trench 5B

Hi all, Alex here from trench 5B. Today Charlie and John found their third Neolithic cup-marked stone in three days – this one came from the tree throw cut by the large pit full of charcoal and evidence of in situ burning that they’ve been excavating. It’s a pure mad find an’ that, lovely to see evidence of cultural deposits in natural features like this. Let’s hope Charlie and John can make it four in four days. Dene, Gordon and Kenny from over the fence in trench 6 came to spread the joy by teaching us “novitiates” the Cup-Marked Stone Dance in honour of this magnificent find.

Students and volunteers gaze up at the dance masters on the spoil heap to learn their moves

Elsewhere in trench 5B we’ve had to do some re-thinking. Thanks to the wonderful dry conditions of the last few days new features have begun to appear in addition to further, previously invisible, extensions on already recorded features, features like the newly discovered ramp on Andy’s palisade posthole. This is a handy technique archaeologists can use to spot the differences between the natural, free-draining, ground surface and the more water-retaining features like postholes and ditches. A new theory was being thrown around in all the posthole-y trenches today. Some people think that these ramps may have held some significance beyond the practical purpose of aiding the lowering of these potentially massive timbers into the ground. Just look at the ramp of my semi-excavated palisade posthole today, did it really need to be that long? Only time will tell what the significance of these exaggerated ramps may be.

The large exaggerated ramp (background) stretching away from my posthole (foreground)

We have such a great bunch of students in the trench that I often find myself at a loss for someday to help, everybody just gets on and does a great job and for most, this is their first dig! Well done guys. Happy SERFing.

August 15th - OPEN DAY

From Trench 5A

Well, today was Open Day at the trenches in Forteviot. SERF invited locals to come view the trenches and get a little background about what we’ve been doing, seeing as we’ve sort of invaded their village for three weeks. We began the day making sure that we knew what to say and spent the vast majority of time giving tours of our trench. Each of us spent some time digging, but I don’t think anyone made huge progress on their features.

The tours were good, though, and we had a lot of interested people coming to see the trench. It was great to have the triple cist burial to show, especially since we only found it yesterday. I think all the visitors were generally pleased and enjoyed seeing the archaeology in action.

And from Trench 5B

Today was something a little bit different – an Open Day: all who were interested in what we are doing at Forteviot were welcomed to come and visit. A number of local people came along, as well as some visitors invited by the archaeologists, and others who travelled from as far afield as Falkirk, Edinburgh and Paisley.

The weather was factor-fifty-fantastic – it seems the gods were pleased with our work. Hopefully so were our visitors!

For me this was my first experience of giving tours and also my own first opportunity since digging began to take a tour of all the trenches myself. Taking stock of the extent of work we have accomplished in such a short time – staff, directors, supervisors, students and volunteers together – was really impressive. It’s clear that the wider landscape we’re working to reveal spans an extensive depth of space and time, and must have been richly invested with meaning by our ancestors. Most of them did not leave a written record for us, so to be able to unravel a little of their world is truly fantastic. For me, the opportunity to impart this to people with unabashed puppy-dog enthusiasm meant great fun!

Meanwhile, as all this was going on, work continued on our trench. Only one week of digging to go now!! At the moment, many trenches are being completed, which means that everything needs to be recorded. Still plenty of time to find more treasure next week though!

I would like to say a big thank-you to my very first tour-recipients who were fantastic - and one of whom I understand was a volunteer last year – to my mum and dad for coming to see the dig, and of course to everyone who contributed to a great day.

Helen Green, student, University of Glasgow

DAY 10 - 13th August 2010

2010-08-14T07:38:00.000+01:00

Law of Dumbuils

It has been awhile since we have updated you on the progress of the excavations at the hillfort. There has been a lot of earth moving and stone moving. We have defined the three ramparts, where the outer two appear to be composed largely of earth and stone. The innermost rampart has large stone (quarried bedrock) facing - with the N face completely or deliberately collapsed. Within the innermost rampart the spread of large stone that defined only one side of the trench was interpreted as a possible structure. In order to get a better picture of what was going on we added an extension to this area and on initial cleaning the stones looked to be in a circular pile - but today the interpretation is back to uncertain (that's the nature of archaeology). Nonetheless, as Colette was cleaning over these stones today she found a circular shale/cannel coal object - perhaps the rough out for a piece of jewellery!

View of possible structure and extension

Colette's cannel coal/shale object

Forteviot

Trench 5A

Hi, I’m Nicola from Glasgow University and I’m working in Trench 5A. Today, at last the sun was shining, the sunscreen was on and it was a glorious day here at Forteviot with no rain. Trench 5a was busy with the planning and excavation of various slots through the inner and outer ditches of our double ditched feature, the deepest of which I’ve been working on for what seems like forever.

Slot 1 of the outer ditch, nearly 1m deep.

We’ve been able to get into the centre of the enclosure now that parts of the baulk have been removed, no treasure yet but we live in hope. We did have a nice piece of metal, possibly Roman lead that came out of the inner ditch this afternoon. This was found by one of the volunteers on her first day, some people have all the luck!

Other highlights of the day include being buzzed by the remote control hovering camera (boys and their toys) and of course the fact that today, being Friday, was PIEDAY! Unfortunately the doughnuts did lead to an invasion by the wasp army which in turn caused an overenthusiastic spraying of the Jungle Formula from some quarters, we’re lucky we can all still breathe!

Trench 5B

Today in trench 5B, people were mostly drawing up the cross sections of the features that they have been excavating, which resulted in an absence of drawing materials and sanity (standard!)

Vivienne started the day rather upset as despite starting to excavate the other side of her pit feature yesterday, she was told this morning that she had to wait a while for some geophysical testing to be done on it, so she has to move on to another feature in the meantime. Gutted!

Drew had to move back to his feature, as although it was previously dismissed as nothing, the DELIGHTFUL weather conditions today (not actually sarcastic WOOHOO!) made visible something which appears to be a posthole. à

Charlie has found a flat working stone with circular holes on either side, which Dene, Gordon and Kenny have deemed “the greatest thing we have ever found on site”, but we weren’t sure whether or not they were trying to be funny or not! à

On top of all this excitement, which we all thought couldn’t get any better, there were a couple of technicians operating a remote controlled helicopter-camera over our trench today. Don’t lie, you want one for Christmas too...

I’ll leave you with this riddle: how many archaeologists does it take to retrieve a pencil?

That’s all for today lads! This groundbreaking (that’s right, I went there) news came to you today from Ailsa J xx

DAY 9 - 12th August 2010

2010-08-12T22:05:00.000+01:00

Forteviot

Trench 5

Today began with a glorious group photograph of Team Awesome. Voila.

As the weather remained fine for most of the day good progress was made with Vivienne and volunteer John finishing their features.

Andy has been working hard on his post-hole feature for several days now. Due to the great depth of this post-hole feature a necessary invention of the Taladel was made. This involved high tech implements such as ladels and masking tape in order to create an instrument which would reach and clear out soil from the post-hole bottom.

Thanks go to everyone for the particularly delightful, high standard of conversation, especially Dean ‘Awesome’ Paton for his manly lifting of people and Nick Window, simply for his name really.

Finally a massive HAPPY BIRTHDAY to our team member Ailsa.

The Birthday girl herself looking fabulous.

Ciao, Charlie x

Trench 6

Hi – I’m Giles, your blogger for today for trench 6. I’m a desk-based archaeologist currently working for the Highland Council. I’m here at Forteviot this week, as the chance to explore a Neolithic site in Scotland, particularly one with such great evidence from the timber side of things is a chance not to be missed.

Progress has continued well today, and only a few showers to slow us down!

I am working with Sandi in the ditch, which is now shaping up as a re-modelled terminal for a henge. This ditch is filled with a number of silty fills, and whilst there has been little of artefactual interest from the lower deposits, it certainly has been interesting to try and untangle the confusing, if not complex, stratigraphy!

The key task today was ensuring that these deposits were fully recorded before excavation could be undertaken of the basal orange sand within this feature, potentially a primary henge fill. The ditch is in places nearly 6m wide, and is now about 1m deep. Numerous examples exist in Britain of ‘special deposits’ being recorded at the terminals of Neolithic ditches – such as the recently discovered Bluestonehenge at Stonehenge - so hope has not been abandoned of finding an interesting cache or assemblage!

Elsewhere in the trench, the heavy work continues apace in the pit which dominates the interior of this henge. We yesterday recorded a number of very large stones which seemed to be deliberately placed. These have now been removed, and probably represent rubble fill of this feature.

Again, this has produced very little in terms of artefacts. However, the large pit recorded during the previous season at Forteviot, within the henge, contained fragments of Iron and lead, Roman amphora and sherds of medieval pottery, so I don’t feel hope should be abandoned here either.

Lighter work continues on the posthole which has now been almost completely excavated by Alistair– and his ladel. Work also continues on the two potential grave cuts which have to date produced a number of sherds of All Over Corded beaker – dated to 2400-2350BC. No more Early Bronze Age pottery today but a number of fragments of burnt bone isn’t too bad!

A newly opened feature is a potential pit or post hole cut into the inside edge of the henge ditch. This is going to be a key relationship to explore in the next few days – particularly if this new feature produces any datable objects.

Trench 7

So the day started with only 3 of us on site! We are pleased to announce that Robbie’s posthole is the deepest feature on site measuring 1.6m and has reached the water table at 1.4m. Elaine continued to excavate her tree throw which is getting deeper and when Corinna arrived later on in the morning we both made section drawings of our two features and then filled out the context sheets...not to mention getting another heavy rain shower in the process. The paleochannel is now thought to be far more modern than it was before since some tarpaulin was found. Unfortunately, Robbie’s ‘trowdel’ didn’t make an appearance today but hopefully it will again sometime in the near future!

Robbie's Posthole

DAY 8 - 11th August 2010

2010-08-12T07:43:00.000+01:00

Forteviot

Trench 5

Hi i’m a french student from Paris. I’ve come to Scotland to improve my English and to experience Scottish archaeology as i’ve previously excavated mostly in France. This morning i was on the same feature that i have been on since the beginning of last week – this was a post hole within the sondage. A sondage is like a trench within a trench for getting a better and quicker understanding of what’s happening within the feature. Other people have been getting deeper and deeper into their

features. This most important thing i’ve found so far has been some charcoal.

Mahaut

Trench 6

Today we dug up the “pit of death” a bit deeper, it’s now about 1.40m deep. I found a sherd of corded ware pottery in it. All of the people who excavated that particular bit looked like bob the builder as we had to wear safety helmets. Mattocks, shovels and wheelbarrows completed the picture.

Also a few big stones were uncovered causing lots of excited noises from our supervisors. Then in a grave pit excavated by Shuhei ( apologies if I got the spelling wrong, which I most probably did) a big piece of beaker showed up and our trench was filled with uuuch and ooochs of our superviosion team.

Apart from that I discovered we have voodoo doll attached to a pole on one of the spoil heaps which no doubt has a purpose of destroying all of our enemies whoever they may be. I also learned that a soup ladle is a very serious piece of archeo-equipment as are sponges apparently!

Dominika

Trench 7

After the rain of yesterday we made good progress on continuing to excavate the features. Jim and Jackie continued with their excavations of palisade postholes, reaching several different fills and taking samples.

Meanwhile Anne and Laura continued excavating the two possible posthole slots at right angles to the line of the palisade enclosure. As the day went on Ann reached what looked like a nice coherent fill with some packing stones and a fill that was the consistency of concrete, and just about as hard to dig! After some rigorous chiselling Anne was ready to photograph and draw the section, Laura will be reaching a similar stage tomorrow.

Robert completed excavation of the semi-circular, amorphous deposit and then went to assist with the section drawing of Robbie’s posthole.

Robbie completed the half-section of another palisade posthole today, stretching a respectable 1.6m into the ground. To accommodate this and stop Robbie from falling headfirst into it, some more breakthrough tool designing took place. The 11^th of August 2010 will for ever more be known for the invention of the ‘trowdle ©’. An aesthetically pleasing, functional piece of equipment, this new invention tops even the likes of the “Planinator ©.” Combining the digging power of a trowel and the scooping potential of the ladle this is a unique and exciting opportunity to get your hands on one. Units are available for a mere £21.78, orders for multiple units accepted. They are also good for spinning at speed around your head. Please contact Clancy and MacIver Ltd. for more information

Trench 8

Hi there, this is Fi again. Today was my last day at trench 8 and it proved to be a very successful one. In the morning I continued to excavate the grave in the larger of the two barrows and came across some human tooth enamel at the western end. It was badly preserved but it’s the first human remains I’ve ever found so I was very excited. The teeth were gently removed with some of the surrounding soil due to their delicate nature and placed in small finds bags. A small circle of finer soil above the teeth was identified by Ewan Campbell as a soil mark created by the brain cavity of the human skull that had once been there slowly becoming filled with silty sand before finally rotting away in the acidic soil. Lewis continued work on the smaller grave and we both managed to get our recording finished.

DAY 7 - 10th August 2010

2010-08-11T07:11:00.000+01:00

Forteviot

Trench 6

After a nice wee skive yesterday it was back to the hard graft again today. So far I’ve been a trench 8 man but as trench 8 is all but complete I was shipped off to whomsoever wanted me and was claimed by trench 6. After a quick look round to get my bearings, I was thrown into ‘ The Pit of Death’, sadly not because there are any remains within it but because of the amount of time its taken. Our orders for the day were to go down a metre but remove as much as possible, as soon as possible, so as to get the complete section of the pit. Our starting point can be seen in the picture to the right. By lunch, after what had felt like a hundred barrow loads, we had removed a large portion and began straightening the edges, with even Kenny and Gordon lending a hand. Just as lunch began the heavens were opened by a solitary crack of lightning when everyone took refuge in the buses. After an hour the rain was still persistent so we waited for a break in the cloud before venturing back to our nicely soaked trenches. Luckily the rain had cooled us all down and mattocking and shovelling became a little easier, didn’t last long though as the clouds parted and we were bathed in sweltering sunshine. We archaeologists are rarely satisfied by the weather! By the end of the day we had removed a massive amount of earth(see left), but sadly had no significant finds, perhaps tomorrow as we remove the bottom we will hopefully unearth something, anything.

Kieran

Trench 8

Day eight on trench eight and work continued with enthusiasm as the final stages of excavation and recording proceeded steadily. Our team was reduced to a hardcore collective of four (almost) competent individuals allowing for a close knit communal cooperative to carry out and collate the days work.

I was delighted to discover that I was continuing the excavation of the central grave in the smaller, adjacent and almost certainly later additional square barrow where only a few days earlier the recovery of tooth enamel from a several teeth caused a ripple of excitement amongst the Forteviot team. Although it is highly unlikely to be able retrieve a date from the finds further examination of the teeth by an individual well versed in the skills of the odontologist may illuminate several physical characteristics allowing us to edge closer to an understanding of the individual who now only remains in the most fragmented and indistinct form.

This was a thought that plagued my thoughts during my days graverobbing, doubts on the moral rights to impose on the long cessated persons own request and wishes was balanced by a desire to discover and better understand the previous occupants of our fine country.

After excavating the remainder of the westerly half of the grave, where the head once resided, I took a sample from the bottom of the grave fill which with a bit of luck will contain enough charcoal or other material to retrieve an accurate date for the burial. It was in this area that I discovered what looked like a worked stone tool, which as it transpired turned out to be merely natural.

This co-incided with Ewen’s discovery of the largest piece of agate, a workable silicate rock type occasionally used to produce stone tools, ever discovered within the Forteviot cropmark sequence, which fairly delighted our resident Mesolithic expert Dene.

Fiona continued her planning and excavtion of the central grave in the main Square barrow which continues to throw up more questions and answers. The possibility of an outer ditch or palisade was an idea bandied about today as well as the suggestion it may be a rare example of an Iron age square barrow. With a bit of luck these questions will be answered in the remaining days. The grave itself appears to be stone lined and hopefully more information will come to light as the top half, where the head resided upon burial is uncovered.

A torrential downpour and occasional lightning halted work for a couple of hours, as the others clambered into cramped and steaming vans and containers we relaxed in our on site tent and engaged in some extended tea drinking and banter.

Lewis Prentice

Day 6 - 8th August 2010

2010-08-09T17:35:00.000+01:00

Forteviot

Trench 5

Hello, I’m Dimitra Mexis - an archaeology student from the University of Glasgow. Today is the second day of my feature (the big rock!) being excavated and not just being cleaned. We’re beginning to see the bottom of it at one corner. The size of the rock was deceptive - as it now appears to be a lot bigger than it looked pre-excavation.

Almost everyone’s features are becoming deeper and deeper by the day (including those over in 5B). Kirsty has been shunned by the group for attracting wasps with her perfume!

These three points have been the highlight of day 7 at Trench 5A.

My big rock!!

Directors’ Update

Trench 5A is coming along nicely. The double enclosure is showing up really well as are the other features in and around it. We have started sections across the outer enclosure ditch, half-sectioning the pit with our big stone (fingers crossed for carved stone!!) and started sectioning two large pits or post-holes, too. The team is working really hard (even when having a major gossip session), no one has been stung (yet) and Heather and I are looking forward next week to really getting into the features and finding out what is on the underside of that buried standing stone. – Meggen Gondek (University of Chester) – Co-director, Trench 5A

Trench 6 - The ‘henge’

Dr Gordon Noble standing in the large central pit explaining discoveries at Trench 6 to members of the other teams

Excavation and discovery continued at an encouraging pace today. Work on the ‘henge’ ditch progressed and clues are emerging regarding whether this site is a prehistoric ceremonial henge (or hengiform) monument or a funerary barrow – or both, with the former transformed into the latter at some point, perhaps in the Early Bronze Age. All Over Corded (AOC) Beaker pottery continued to be found in the northerly (N-S aligned) rectangular feature and hopes are high that it may perhaps be an early (earth-cut) Beaker grave. Moreover, a sherd of AOC Beaker was also discovered in the westerly rectangular feature (also N-S aligned and similarly sized). If so these would be exceptionally rare finds – but only time will tell. Excavation of the large (and deep!) central pit was also further extended and we are coming ever closer to discovering what (if anything) is at its centre. Some of the team are hoping for an impressive Medieval kingly burial! Others are less certain. It appears similar in size, profile and fill to the pit excavated in the centre of the henge monument excavated in 2009. The day and week was rounded off by Dr Brophy and Dr Noble giving all trench teams a guided tour of the trench discoveries of the last six exciting days. Today we also said farewell to volunteer Jim – his sieve-fixing, hard digging and hard-boiled sweets will be missed!

Neil

Trench 7

Robert here today from Aberdeen University. First impressions of the trench this morning were good. Many of the features were showing up clearly, with evidence for new features that hadn’t really been visible before. We began the day by towelling back the final area of the trench, cleaning it up ready for it to be planned. After the area had been cleared the tape measures where brought out and set up so that the area could be planned. As the day went on everyone set about their own individual tasks. This included continuing with the planning of the trench and its features, carrying on with the excavation of features (such as post holes and the ditch cut). We even got onto starting excavation on some new post hole features and a possible tree throw. But its early days working on these and no finds as of yet. The post holes already under excavation continued to yield more charcoal.

Trench 8

Natalia here from Glasgow Uni, or at the minute the tropics of trench 8. Today in the glorious sunshine at trench 8 we continued excavation of the ditches leaving various baulks and fully excavating the corners. I dug the entirety of the North West corner of the western barrow (the big one!) so that we can see the cut in plan and notice any anomalies. Thanks to differential drying we noticed a band of dark silt running along the outer edge of the ditch cut leading me to wonder if it were possibly a palisade... too far fetched? The afternoon was much less fun for me as it entailed looking over all the context sheets and various other boring paperwork. Paddy however had a fantastic last day in the interior grave of the Eastern barrow where he found tooth enamel- much more exciting than it sounds due to the poor survival conditions in this soil!! Euan says that it looks like a young individual who was buried here. Hopefully Fi will find some in the interior grave of the western square barrow!!!

Paddy excavating the tooth enamel from the grave in the eastern barrow.

Day 5 - 7th August 2010

2010-08-07T22:50:00.000+01:00

Forteviot

Trench 5

Soil, toil and lots of spoil; the sun sets on another day at Forteviot! I’m Vivienne Barz, from trench 5B, and I’ll be taking you through day six of the SERF Project.

It appears as if all the hard work: clearing, digging, hoeing, trowelling and, of course, bloodletting in the form of pancake-sized hand blisters, is beginning to pay off. Throughout Trench 5, many students have unearthed all sorts of Archaeological treasures, ranging from sizable chunks of charcoal, burnt human and animal bone and of course, lots and lots of lovely, datable dirt. I am currently cross sectioning a lovely charcoal rich pit with one particularly nice large piece which came out today, perfect for scientific dating!! Additionally, the students are learning a plethora of industry information: techniques for topographic survey, standing building survey, and finds recording.

So far, so good!

My beautiful charcoal rich pit.

Trench 6

Hello, I’m Alex, I’ve been working on Trench 6. Interpretation of the contents of this trench is a bit ambiguous, though at the moment we think we are dealing with a Neolithic henge feature, and thanks to a hard days work by some of the volunteers on the surrounding ditch (approximately 6 meters wide!!), we think we may have found a ‘terminal’ confirming that we are not dealing with a bronze age barrow after all (for the moment anyway).

I have spent the day excavating a feature that has turned out to be a post-hole just beyond the outside of the ditch. There have been no significant finds (besides some small charcoal fragments), this is interesting because this and other parts of the site seem to have been abandoned carefully and cleanly by the final original occupants, possibly a sign of the (sacred?) importance attached to it while it was in use in the ancient past. Most features seem to have been backfilled tidily with the gravelly soil and pebbles, perhaps during the Iron Age or the Medieval period.

However, the day was not completely fruitless in terms of finds: some fragments of bronze age ‘beaker’ pottery emerged from a feature within the henge and what is potentially a bronze or copper pin or buckle came put of the soil nearby. There was also the invention of a remarkable new planning device by Dr Brophy and Dr Noble (patent pending).

The Planinator: leaning post, plum-bob and tool holder for the archaeologists of tomorrow!

Trench 7

Corinna here today from Glasgow Uni. Today we started off with scraping back part of the trench to clean it up a bit. I managed to find a bit of charcoal by the linear feature, then I did some more trowelling of the same feature, but haven’t found anything so far. The others were digging up their features & some were planning too. For the afternoon me, Lindsey, Elaine & Fiona went to learn about topography. We used EDMs, computerized theodolites to you and me, and they required a lot of complicated setting up as they were pretty fiddly. Me & Fiona weren’t so good at setting it up, but Elaine & Lindsey did it well quick, probably because Lindsey’s done it before. We measured out a plot of land using the prism staff & the machine uses lasers to work out coordinates & angles & heights of land. Had to stand up a lot & try to keep the staff completely straight so the machine could measure out the lines. The weather was good.

This is a pic of Laura doing some trowelling.

Trench 8

Hi, I’m Fiona, a 2^nd year student at Glasgow University working on the Pictish square barrows in Trench 8. An overcast morning saw us continuing excavation of the ditches of both barrows and Fi began excavating a section of the suspected grave within the western barrow. Specific contexts were difficult to define, likely due to repeated plough action, and progress was initially slow but the grave seems to be there as expected. What may be discovered within it, only time will tell. Lewis began a half section of the very dark feature in the south east of the trench which we suspected may have been a charcoal grave but seems to be a fire-pit, possibly Neolithic, containing a lot of charcoal, charred seed deposits and evidence of in-situ burning. The clouds eventually gave way to intense sunshine after lunch and I bade goodbye to Trench 8 for the afternoon while I was introduced to topographical survey training using the total stations. Utilising heavy and (very) expensive equipment seemed a small price to pay in order to get off my knees for a few hours. It was a lot of fun but I did miss the digging. Hopefully there will be more information about Trench 8 features and finds when I return tomorrow.

Lewis beginning excavation of the pit with evidence of in-situ burning.

Law Dumbuils

Hi Colette here from Aberdeen University. I’m situated at the hill fort on Law of Dumbuils and today has been fairly eventful. Before we could begin digging today we had to manoeuvre around the herd of sheep in our path, not what you would expect on the daily commute to work. Once on site I returned to the area I had been digging the previous day the south end of ditch 1. Here we have hit bed rock quite close to the surface, and we were trying to see how far down the trench it came at that particular level. After much hard work trowelling and using the matttock we discovered: not very far. Since it wasn’t very pleasant work I luckily got moved down to the clay area at where the ditch is at the lowest point. Here we were investigating whether the clay was potentially over tumble rubble like just a bit further up or if in fact the clay ran underneath the rubble. I scraped away for hours and eventually found what we were looking for, a definitive line of where the clay leads. I discovered that the clay was in fact underneath the tumble rubble. Whilst searching for this I found a stone bashing tool, which may be related to the mortar found earlier by Alex just up from where I was working. Other finds today included burnt bone most likely from sheep and also what looks like a sheep’s shoulder bone, these finds came from the North facing side of rampart 1. After a hard days slog in the muddy trench you just want to get back for your tea, but the journey home was just as eventful as in the morning with sheep in our path, we were lucky this time though as Stuart managed to scare them away ;).

Alex's 'mortar'

DAY 4 - 6th August 2010

2010-08-07T07:26:00.000+01:00

Forteviot

Trench 5

Hey I’m Kirsty and I’m a part of the excavations in Trench 5a. The current main features in the trench I’m working in include: the outer enclosure wall, a few post holes, the inner enclosure and a standing stone as well as some mysterious other features which we are currently trying to understand. Today I was working on one of these mysterious features, 5009, which seems to be connected to the outer enclosure wall, but it could be completely unrelated, so we are trying to get to the bottom of this, although this is difficult as the rain resulted in the soil changing colour making it less easy to define. Apart from that we generally finished up the pre excavation plans of the trench and finished reading the levels for those plans. There were some discoveries, a few pieces of modern pottery or china and some large pieces of charcoal, which suggest burning on some features.

Measuring levels for the site plan.

Trench 6

Hey, this is Alasdair from Trench no.6. Today the weather has taken a slight turn for the worse, with grey skies and rain showers throughout the day. This made it a rather gruelling task to excavate the features that have revealed themselves over the last few days. Several of the post-hole features in our trench have now expanded in size as we have excavated further, two of which are now believed to be burials. The interpretation of the site is changing all the time, as more and more of the features are uncovered. The team has also began removing soil from a section of the henge ditch, a large ring around 6m in width, in search of an entranceway.

While an entrance is yet to be identified, I made a chance discovery: a small glass bead, which I have been told is likely to date from the Roman Iron Age, made from recycled Roman glass. This was quite exciting, as it one of only two glass finds ever made on the site, the other being a small glass droplet. This has lead to a theory that the material was in fact being made on or near the site. All very exciting, and I’m feeling rather pleased with myself for the discovery of the glass bead! Now I’m just hoping for the weather to start getting better...

A slightly blurry photo, but it gives you an idea of the scale and colour of the bead.

Trench 7

Lindsay here today! We trowled the next section of the trench that needed to be planned and then set up measuring tapes for plan drawings. Some people drew plans and others dug individual features. All of the features we were digging today were possible post holes. At the moment there are two apparent post holes, both have a center that is composed of dark brown soil which indicated a post pipe. The dark brown soil of the post pipes also have charcoal inclusions, the colour and charcoal inclusions indicate that the post pipes were burned. In one of the post pipes several pieces of burnt red stone were found. Several pieces of charcoal were also collected for carbon dating which should give us some precise dates for the postholes.

Trench 8

Hi, I’m Anna, a final year student from Glasgow Uni working on the square barrow site. Today was rainy which, although sometimes is a blessing since features can be seen more distinctly, was not today as the constant rain only helped to confuse the outline of the ditch feature with the soil around it. This made trowelling the features more difficult as we were trying not to trowel outside of the ditch. The ditches of the eastern barrow started to be excavated further today. There are three ditches to this barrow, the fourth side being part of the western barrow. The ditches were partly excavated and could perhaps be finished tomorrow. The ditches of the eastern barrow are not very deep. The site in general is not very deep since the area is on a slight brae of the hill and so has been more affected by ploughing. In the southern ditch of the eastern barrow we found some charcoal which indicates that human activity occurred on the site in the past and will hopefully give us some precise dates for its use.

DAY 3 - August 5th 2010

2010-08-06T07:52:00.002+01:00

Forteviot

Trench 5

The very last of the trowelling back and cleaning was finished up this morning on trench 5. A light rain made for the best photo-shoot we’ve had so far with the double-ditch showing up beautifully on both sides of the baulk. These perfect conditions prevailed for the first few minutes of pre-excavation planning, before the sun unfortunately came out and the soil dried once again to a homogenous grey-brown.

As planning continued, sections of the ditch and surrounds were selected for deeper sondage. The spoil was sieved for artefacts and biological material, a lot of stones resulted.

The large rock protruding in the South-West corner has been stirring interest – cleaning by Dimitra has revealed a base cluster of tightly-packed small stones. There is the possibility that this is a barrow-grave, as discovered in previous years, has been discussed, but only further excavation will tell.

The ditch segments in the baulked-off corner seem to be continuing to a good depth, and our team are getting quite proud of their own little patches. It will be interesting to see whether the ditches are continuous below the gravelly layers, and also what the distinct pits (5008) and (5001) show when they are continued tomorrow.

Relaxing during lunch, right before the rain...

Trench 6

Hey all, I am Bambos. Today the weather had once again been kind to us, there were only a couple of rain bursts and plenty of sunshine. When we arrived at trench 6 (where a Neolithic henge, post holes, pits and a number of barrows are presumed to exist) the morning dew that soaked the surface made the features of archaeological interest stand out from the natural deposits. After a quick briefing everyone took their place at their designated posts, and with trowels in hand begun to remove the earth in search for something...that is anything...indicative of past human activity. We were nevertheless not left disappointed when burned bone fragments made their appearance in an area within the henge. With great anticipation their origin and date may become known when analysed within a laboratory environment (hopefully they will prove to be really old and human). Our excitement was even further stimulated with the discovery of two pottery fragments found once again within the henge. On first glance they appear to belong to the Neolithic period (perhaps early to mid). As you can see this is exciting stuff...I bet you wished you were here to experience it all. Take care...

Trench 7

Hi, my name is Elaine Halligan and I’m a student at Glasgow University. I have been working in trench 7, a Neolithic trench in Forteviot. This morning when we turned up at the site the features in our trench were a lot clearer due to the rain last night. It looks as if there are more than first thought. We began excavating some of the features after the planning was done, and I was excavating feature A, which is either a possible posthole or a tree throw, hopefully it will become clear tomorrow. There have been no significant finds so far but it has been interesting all the same, hopefully tomorrow! The other guys on the trench carried on with the planning, and will be ready to start excavating the rest of the features tomorrow, so we should be getting a better idea of what we are working with then. Luckily the weather has been quite warm today with only the odd shower, and hopefully it will stay like that for the rest of the week.

Trench 8

Hi, my name’s Fi. I’m a second year archaeology student from Glasgow University working on Trench 8, the square barrows. We had great sunny weather for most of the day, which although was lovely to work in dried out the soil in the trench an awful lot. This meant a lot of near crumbling sections and very little colour differentiation in the soil for us to distinguish and interpret features. Despite this every one managed to get their sections of ditch that they were working on recorded and the trench edges have all neatened up. We also got the levels and co-ordinates measured for our section drawings as Cathy brought us an EDM theodolite for the afternoon. We even had time for a tidying trowel of the trench surface right before the rain which really made the different contexts stand out. Hopefully tomorrow we can finally start to excavate one of the possible graves!!

Day 2 - August 4th 2010

2010-08-04T22:53:00.000+01:00

Forteviot

Trench 8

My name is Paddy Gleeson and I came to Forteviot from University College Cork.

This is the third day here and the second properly excavating. Today I spent most of the day finishing digging my section through the central ditch of one of the Pictish Square barrows in Trench 8. The ditch seems to be the eastern ditch of the larger of the two square barrows but may have functioned as the ditch for the smaller one too though they are not joined in plan. The section didn’t produce anything artefactual; only sandy clay with some large stones towards the centre. After a while I began to get my eye in and finally figured out how to spot the edges and the bottom.

Other than me in the trench, most people seem to be doing the same task, digging sections through the ditches. Fiona, is digging some sort of pit that has produced an animal bone, possibly a rib bone I heard someone say though due to the preservation in the soil here we are guessing it’s modern. The only other find I remember from today is that Fi (quite an expert at sieving) found a charred grain in the fill of her section across the northern ditch of the larger, western square barrow. The most amusing ‘find’ of the day is definitely Anna’s ‘thumb stone’: a really cool naturally degraded stone that when placed on someone’s thumb appears to look exactly like a gnarly thumb tip. Not archaeological but highly amusing!

All hard at work recording the sections of the ditches of the smaller barrow.

Trench 6

Hello! I am Calum Macpherson, an undergraduate from Aberdeen University. Today in the trench there was a move from the pure trowelling of yesterday into some rad planning of the grids and the start of excavating some of the features. The day began with a light trowel over several of the grid squares now assigned with colourful names such as John Boy, Liz, Marvin and Mervin. After this we moved on to planning the grid squares by mapping out all of the features shown which for me, involved a lot of staring blankly at a grid square trying to map out the features below. After what seemed like an age we took a photo of the area and broke for lunch. After a break for lunch people started to move onto excavating the features they were assigned. I was assigned an area of charcoal and as yet I havent managed to excavate particularly deeply as soon after i started to excavate it was time to pack up and leave it for another day.

The cleaning continues for some as others behind them begin the pre excavation planning.

2010 Season DAY 1: 3rd August 2010

2010-08-04T07:24:00.001+01:00

Forteviot

Trench 5 - enclosure of unknown date....
Hey, this is Chelsea from Glasgow University. I was working on Trench 5a. Today we were cleaning up the site using hoes and shovels. This was to make the features of the site become clearer. After using the hoes we had to go over what we had done using our trowels. We were able to see the outer henge ditches really well after all the cleaning. This was a lot of hard work but I guess it has to be done!

The cleaning line making progress over the trench.

Trench 6 - henge, but perhaps not a henge

Hey, this is Sandi from Aberdeen University and Trench #6. Today, we spent the first part of the morning cleaning the trenches with hoes and then the rest of the day was spent cleaning the trench all over again with trowels; it was fairly simple if a little back-breaking! Now that the trench is clear it’s much easier to see the features we have. So far we can see part of a Neolithic henge ditch and what might be a compacted historical road that runs North-South across the trench. The weather was pretty fair today, if a little breezy which was nice during the hard labour!

A well deserved rest during lunch.

Trench 7 - palisaded enclosure postholes

Hi, my name’s Jim Waugh and I’ve been working in Trench 7. Most of today has been spent on the preparation of the trench; sides being squared, the surface of the trench floor being cleaned by hoes and various features being marked out for further investigation. Among the features that we’ll be looking at in more depth are a series of post holes, thought to deliniate the route of the ancient entry avenue into the site, and various other patches that have caught the interest of the dig managers and supervisors. Although it has been a day of hard graft, the fact that everyone in Cathy’s Commandos worked their socks off meant that, from now on, we can all get on with the archaeological work from tomorrow morning.

All possible features to be investigated being marked by flags prior to excavation.

Trench 8 - squarish barrows
xDay one on trench eight and morale was high as we proceeded to scrape back the first layers of topsoil to define the existing features with greater clarity and to realise new ones. The identification of adjacent twin Pictish Square Barrows, and possible supplementary burials within the Forteviot cropmark complex provides further possibilities to explore the complex relationships between earlier prehistoric activity and later activities, and to advance our understanding of Pictish burial practices.

Following several hours of backbreaking labour with our good friends the spade and mattock, further trowel work allowed us to clarify the identifiable features within the larger square barrow, with a central burial surrounded by a square ditch. Centuries of ploughing have flattened any protruding structural anomalies that are only just beginning to be revealed.

Under the capable hands of Dr. Ewan Campbell, site supervisor Miss Bain and his crew of motley archaeologists, ranging from the uninitiated and perpetually confused first time field archaeologist (such as myself) to the hardened excavators, work progressed swiftly and confidently.

Following the initial clearing work began exploring several unidentifiable features, ranging from potential post holes outside the main square barrows to the taphonomic influences of previous animal occupants. Excavation began on the ditches defining the outside boundary of the two square barrows revealing their extent and depth.

The square barrows are very distinct after cleaning!

Law of Dumbuils

Day 1 at the Law of Dumbuills turned out to be a very productive day. Arriving on site this morning to find an empty hillfort, no trenches insitu and no porta-loo to be seen eeeek. I thought I was going to have to bagsy a spot within the trees. But luckily no, Tessa pulled out a chemical toilet from the back of the landrover and a tent. We found a lovely spot and the toilet tent is now set up and ready to use, I think it’s still to be christened.

Anyway back to the archaeology. After having a look around the hillfort and locating archaeological features we set up a 35.0 by 2.0m trench running North-South across 3 ramparts and 3 ditches. De-turfing was tough at points as a lot of the grass was like springs and the spades kept bouncing off it, but by 3pm the de-turfing was done and the trowelling began. The ramparts are well preserved at points and we’re already uncovering a lot of stone. The hillfort itself is in a great location amazing views North, East and West with Castle Law situated to the South. Overall a very productive day and the rain stayed away, which is just as well because we forgot the gazeebo. Looking forward to what’s in store tomorrow!

SERF Begins!

2010-08-02T09:01:00.000+01:00

Hi everyone,

Well, its a rainy morning in Glasgow and the staff and students of University of Glasgow are assembling for another fieldwork season up in Forteviot.

Finds are being packed up, luggage stowed and then we are off up the road to Strathallan School; who are kindly putting us up again for the month.

There we will meet up with the University of Aberdeen contingent and assorted others for lunch, a preliminary introduction to the project, then off to site to get some afternoon cleaning on the go! Hi Hoe!

Staff have been up in the area doing some geophysical survey, opening the trenches and getting some preliminary cleaning done all ready to get started. Hopefully the constant dreich weather in Glasgow won't follow us north and keep us off site today.

Hopefully our followers; old and new will enjoy the coming weeks of updates, info and pictures we will post on our blog - tell your friends.

Cheers for now,
Cathy

2009-08-23T07:41:00.000+01:00

DAY 20: 22/08/09

Saturday 22, and another great day at the cemetery site at least for me personally.

I started on my feature four days ago and have trowelled down to a depth of about a metre on my Pictish burial. The contexts have varied from soft earth to shingle to gravel and back to earth until 2 days ago. Spotting a small deposit of charcoal, I followed it westwards to reveal a thin linear shape around 8 inches long and an inch wide, thinking it was a burned stick of some sort, I called Ewan to have a look. He recommended that I trowel the opposite east side to see if there was an opposite linear feature which there appeared to be also. To cut a long tale short the last two days have revealed a coffin shape of charred wood remarkably preserved in the acid soil which to me resembles a small burnt out boat. As the feature deepened and my arms shortened, a plank was needed to lay across the cut so that I could work in a more comfortable position which really helped, a good tip for the future would be to place a good flat stone under each end to stop the edges of the cut breaking and falling in like it did with me yesterday. Yesterday, I came across tooth enamel at the west end of the cut which I first mistook for small pieces of straw stalk which I thought had blown in to the feature but on closer examination appeared to be teeth. I laid the first piece on my trowel and found that it had only one side and was fragile and shell like. Around 7 or 8 were discovered and bagged carefully and for a while Archaeology was more like delicate dentistry. Today revealed more of the charred wood remains of what seems to be a coffin but the jury is still out with Ewan suggesting a log burial and a monastic burial as possible candidates of interpretation. In the last 15 mins of the day as I cleared the base of the burial to the pea gravel, I spotted more wood remains at the west end and a greyish-white sticky soil above where I found the enamel and so tonight the area is protected most skilfully with plastic bags, stones and a wheelbarrow on top, and awaits our return on the last morning of field school; and I have not even started my plan yet!

Clark

2009-08-21T22:53:00.000+01:00

DAY 19: 21/08/09

Another eventful day at the henge…

We were pleased to welcome two groups of children and their teachers from Forgandenny and Forteviot primary schools, who all seemed to enjoy their tour of the site…perhaps some budding archaeologists in the making?

Bones..bones..bones were the order of the day with the now termed cremation cemetery area of the trench producing more burnt bone than you could shake a trowel at. The intrepid ditch diggers finally made it to the bottom of their ‘beautiful’ section in the henge ditch, despite the weather threatening to turn nasty at points (which did give Jamie a chance to show of his rather fetching plastic poncho ensemble!). The weather cleared up towards the end of a very successful day, let’s hope it lasts for the last dash tomorrow…

Emma

And an update from the cemetery...

With two days to go it was all action in the cemetery trench. We’ve made good progress and I think we should be finished without too much panic by Sunday!

There’s lots of action happening in the round barrow area. The central grave was excavated completely by Anne-Marie today. Although we didn’t have any remaining traces of the body, we can tell by the size of the grave cut that this was for an adult, probably not much taller than 5’5’’. Alex’s grave became more complicated today as it is cut by one of our line of stony post-holes. We’ve got to excavate that out first before we can complete the excavation of the grave. Our other stony post holes were tackled by Eilidh, Robert & Lauren and are all either under excavation or we’ve finished half-sectioning them. Some of them are really clear and you can see where the post would have been from all the stone packing materials. Others look like the post must have been pulled out and the packing and other stones were dumped inside them. We aren’t exactly sure what this line of 6 postholes is. It might be one side of a building or structure. I am pretty sure that they are cutting the round barrow and so must be later, especially as they cut Alex’s grave, which is likely to be from the same time. We did quite a bit of drawing today to move on with recording and Haileigh drew most of them!

The big excitement is Clark’s grave. Clark would be writing this blog today, but he fell ill in the afternoon so we’ve given him some time off. Must be all that hanging off a plank with his head in a grave! Yesterday we realised we had degraded wood remains representing the coffin. It is very unusual to have any organic remains so we are really lucky! Today, we also found a few fragments of tooth enamel in this grave, which is probably all that remains of the person that was buried here. It is very fragile.

Over in the enclosure area, we’ve finished half-sectioning a large but shallow pit and Ewan and Gordon also uncovered a new feature, which Rachael will finish excavating tomorrow. The new feature has lots of charcoal including some twig sized pieces. We also have some burnt bone coming from here. Two ditch sections have been valiantly dug by Natalia over the past two days, which means we’ve finished our explorations of this feature.

Tomorrow we finish up the final pieces, continue to excavate our graves and do lots of recording.

Meggen

2009-08-20T23:44:00.000+01:00

Day 18: 20/08/09

It was a busy day today - gearing up for the final two days and all hands were on deck to excavate in the trenches. At the cemetery they covered a lot of ground - excavating more of the round barrow and exposing a corner of the large square enclosure. The star find of the day was the stain of a wooden coffin in one of the graves - more of this, hopefully, tomorrow - when it will be excavated. At the henge site they put a lot of effort into digging the henge ditch - which seems to have worked well and they are nearly finished - hooray. Elsewhere a range of other features: pits, post-holes and 'smudges' were dug and recorded.

Marta tells us about her experience at the henge trench...

It was an interesting day at the henge today where I continued to dig the Huge Mysterious Bottomless Hole that I have now been working on for what seems like ages. Fortunately, I’m now sharing this joy with Anna and together we’ re digging down to the natural gravel and finding a lot of burnt bone in the fill that we’re taking out (Anna, who seems to attract the more spectacular stuff, has also found a ‘wooden object’ which is still awaiting more serious investigation).

A lot of people at the site are now excavating their own features, which is to say that we’re all digging holes in the ground. Poor Dene is running from one to the other trying to answer all our questions and keep everything under control.

As this day was adorned by a few ‘showers’ there were several moments when we thought we were going to get rained off, but fortunately we managed to last to the end of the day. Hopefully, tomorrow the weather won’t stop us from working as we still have a lot to do and only 3 days left to go.

Marta

2009-08-19T19:46:00.000+01:00

Day 16: 19/08/09

An update from the henge trench with Gordy (who has been there from the start)...

Yipee! – after 10 days in a large hole I finally got a gravelly bottom, and Dene relented and moved me onto something else. Sixteen days in and life on the dig is starting to resemble Groundhog Day; wake up in the morning, speak to the same people, go to the same place, do the same thing… Agggghhhh! But one thing has changed – our shiny new dining hall where everyone can spread out and try to sit as far away from each other as physical possible; it is funny how people separate into their wee cliques and seem reluctant to move out of their comfort zones – maybe we should play musical chairs.

The hot chocolate machine is not working, which does seem to be the one thing dominating my mind right now, and the ‘hot chocolate flavour’ drink from the coffee machine is like drinking a cup of mud with a hint of foam.

The Henge was a buzz of activity as usual today with the Funk Brothers enjoying a day of destruction in the area around the cist – they even managed a late duet of “clean up your spoil”, though they seem to have forgotten the lyrics after that. It was noted that Dr B is not happy about the lengthy commute from the trench to the toilet area, and has promised to have them located nearer next year. It was also pointed out that perhaps the distance is not a bad thing after all, as the smell has real possibilities of reaching the gods – perhaps it is an authentic Neolithic smell to add to the phenomenological experience.

The ladle is in demand today as multiple deep holes appear across the site – maybe the budget will stretch to 2 next year?

Gordy

****
And at the cemetery site...

I had a good day at the Pictish cemetery today where I continued to excavate a section through the central burial of the round barrow. At one point I thought we were going to get rained off as some ominous rain clouds were coming our way but luckily they were only teasing. However if the wind continues I don’t think the tent is going to last much longer as two big holes have appeared in it. At least it’s still standing as opposed to the henge tent. Anyway back to the burial. It’s been pretty difficult to work out the different contexts as animals have had their fun burrowing through it. In fact they’ve had their fun through out the whole barrow. There were two nice rectangular shaped charcoal deposits approx 5cm by 10cm, one in a corner of the burial and one along the side (possible remnants of burning stakes? who knows). By the end of the day I reached a large stony/pebbly layer, don’t think it’s the bottom yet so I look forward to digging that tomorrow.

Anne-Marie

2009-08-18T21:38:00.000+01:00

Day 15: 18/08/09

After a relaxing day off yesterday we were all back to work. It was a good day all around - although it did drizzle for a bit in the afternoon.

At Green of Invermay we continued cleaning the N end on the trench and the stone-packed post-hole that Kenny found a few days ago seems to be part of a wall - a palisade. At the S end of the trench the ditch still seems to go deeper - we are now at a context with ash and occasional burnt bone - lovely.

Until today we had only been excavating a 1m slot through the ditch and it was becoming necessary to excavate the other half. Ben helped me mattock to the top of the ditch, which was hard work. At the end of the day Matt uncovered a possible pit/large posthole between the ditch and the wall - another hooray! This trench is now producing lots of lovely features...

When we came back to the school I got to see the star find from the henge trench, which was a really nice lithic arrowhead. It is tiny, but has been worked finely at the edges. This arrowhead was found by Anna within the henge - brilliant!

Tessa

****
Andy will fill us in on his experiences at the cemetery site...

Today I was at the Pictish cemetery site. I’ve been working on a posthole for my portfolio, its more relaxing than mattocking/shovelling. The features on the site are a lot clearer and more easily identifiable this week especially the barrow. With the change in conditions my posthole appears larger than when I left it last week and so I had to expand upon my original excavation. I planned the stony fill of the posthole and photographed it. Personal finds today consisted entirely of charcoal. Need to finish off drawing the profile tomorrow. Alex stole Gordons hot sauce. Went to the toilet and felt uncomfortable with Dene watching. Took a soil sample from the posthole. Lost my phone and found it in the bottom of my trousers. Emmm I can’t think of anything else to write so thanks for taking the time to read my boring blog!

Love Andy

2009-08-17T21:14:00.000+01:00

Day 14: OPEN DAY 16/08/09

The Open Day was a success - we had so many visitors! We would like to thank everyone who came along and took an interest in what we are doing. Below are some updates from the main sites...

****
The henge...

SERF open day today, so a very busy day for us all. The day started a little grey and overcast, but brightened up later into a lovely sunny (if very windy) afternoon. I’m working on the mini-henge to the south of the main henge, planning a feature that appeared as I trowelled down through the henge ditch. However, we were so inundated with visitors today that none of us got much done. Instead, most of our time was spent giving guided tours or answering questions. In total we had over 600 visitors to the site – far more, I think, than anyone had expected. Many of the visitors had come because they had heard about the cist burial and wanted to see it for themselves. I think everyone was pleased to see that there are so many people interested in our site.

We left site today pleased that they day had gone so well. I think most of us would agree that it lived up to Leaf’s expectation yesterday that it would be the best open day ever.

Kirsty

****

The cemetery

Well the tent survived the wind last night and the wind today! Busy and blustery day at the cemetery today, started off by finally being given a feature to dig, was quite fun even if it was only a posthole, especially as I found some burnt bone and charcoal. Dug part of the way down before I hit a layer of stones, I then took some pictures and did a section drawing before starting to dig the other half of the posthole to figure out if there was any pattern to the stones. Unfortunately I didn’t get much done as I was soon distracted by the hordes of people visiting the site for the open day, although we got significantly less people at the henge site got. Giving tours was nowhere near as bad as I thought it would be and was actually quite enjoyable, though I did feel like I was starting to sound like a broken record and I never did get back to my posthole, which will now have to wait until Tuesday.

Those at the other end of the site started excavating more of the barrow ditch as well as cleaning around it revealing what may be some more graves.

Rachael

2009-08-15T21:57:00.001+01:00

Day 13: 15/08/09

At Green of Invermay...
After being rained off after lunch yesterday, Tessa and I braved the drizzle at the hillfort this morning to inspect the potential swimming pool situation. Thankfully our well draining soil and sturdy trench edges had preserved all the important archaeological discoveries we had made.

While Tessa started the excavation of the upper ditch fill I mattocked away to bring the whole trench down to the sondage level. While doing this, I quickly discovered that I am turning into my gran. Muttering almost constantly about my aching back and sore knees, I persevered, in a context almost devoid of finds - except the discovery of a nice little flint with bifacial retouch on one edge.

Meanwhile Tessa was churning out the finds – 910 being a veritable treasure trove of pottery; mainly white gritty ware and a few token pieces of green glaze. Lorraine and Jeremy came over to tell us that there was too much laughter coming from our trench (in between muttering about aches and pains) and were quickly roped in to recording all of Tessa’s finds.

The interpretation of all this Medieval pottery? There have been some serious medieval shenanigans going on in our ditch – more on that later….

Before lunch we received a visit from the students on their tour of the sites and after lunch Sara joined our ‘cool digging gang’.

The weather cleared up nicely in the afternoon and after a successful day we packed up and cleared off. A nice end to my last day at the hill-fort, tomorrow, much to Tessa’s disgust, I am off to do survey.

And finally…..we learnt a valuable lesson today; image files cannot be turned into musicals.

Goodbye and Goodnight!

Cathy

*****
Meanwhile at the henge ditch...

After losing this morning to torrential rain, a few intrepid diggers made our way to site early (mainly due to not being bothered going to see the Dupplin Cross again). Rebecca and I in the henge ditch section worked like dogs, updating the day-book with all our wonderful contexts (we have no idea what is going on with them, but they’re pretty), and finding our beautiful ditch re-cut along the whole 5m length of the section. Our wonderful directors had a lovely time getting to dig for the first time this year, but soon abandoned any attempt when a second context appeared, and it all became a bit complicated.

Once we got Alex and Lauren back after lunch the work really picked up.

We have now planned the burnt layer in the ditch we were excavating to and will ‘whack it out’ (KB, pers. Comm.) tomorrow. While sampling this layer, there was a reappearance of Arnold (regular blog followers will know who I mean); hardcore as ever, we had to move him from our trench for the sake of our tools.

The rest of the trench could have disappeared today, and to be honest the four of us in the henge ditch probably wouldn’t have noticed. I hear all was well, however…

Now we are off for a wee relax before the hoards descend tomorrow for the best open day ever*….

Leaf
xx

*our lawyers inform me we cannot guarantee best open day ever...

***
And at the cemetery trench...

The torrential rain continued for most of last night and into the morning hours. We normally leave for site at just before 9am, but it isn’t a good idea to be traipsing around in the slippy mud on an archaeological site. So, we held off for a few hours before starting work. We headed to the workroom where Ewan debriefed the students on our current finds. Then there was a tour to see the Dupplin Cross (one of my favourites – you can see King David’s fingers as he plays the harp! An amazing sculpture of the 9^th century), which currently resides in St Serf’s in Dunning. The students were also given a tour of all the dig sites in preparation for tomorrow’s Open Day when they will be providing site tours. I didn’t go on the trip, however. The rain was light enough and I needed some ‘alone time’ with my trench and the round barrow area. The minibus dropped me off and I spent the morning planning and photographing the new features emerging around the Pictish round barrow grave.

The students and Ewan arrived at about lunchtime and the rain was gone, so we went to work cleaning off areas J&K to help us define the barrow ditch more clearly. In the process of cleaning the barrow area over the past few days, we’ve revealed at least two dug graves with either stony fills or possibly stone packing for some sort of marker. One of these, the possible ‘post hole’ Clark was digging yesterday, looks like it cuts the barrow ditch, which means it is later than the round barrow. A few more postholes have also emerged in the round barrow area both inside and outside the barrow. Things are starting to look really interesting!

Over in the interior of the square enclosure ditch, more revelations have occurred. It looks like our postholes here are actually part of a building. The building looks like a roundhouse, which works well the suspected later Iron Age date of the square enclosure. We still need to find some good secure dating evidence in our enclosure ditch and the post-holes, though. We have quite a few pieces of nice pottery of probably Roman Iron Age date, now, coming from areas disturbed by medieval and later ploughing.

The team today worked very hard – braving some extremely gusty winds. There was some good banter today and even some singing (thankfully not by me) and some rapping (of a sort) provided by Jamie. We do have one tragedy to report – our trusty site tent is on its last legs and we are not sure if it will last the night.

Meggen

2009-08-14T21:41:00.000+01:00

DAY 12: 14/08/09

Today we have reports from the cemetery and henge excavations and the walkover survey high in the hills...

*****

Day 12 at FC09, the cemetery site. The morning light looked promising but reports that heavy rain was to be expected had all attired in their finest waterproofery.

I was quite looking forward to working in the rain as I had remembered my rain resistant trousers for the first time and was dying to try them out. I started where I left off yesterday and set upon my little feature with my trowel, bucket and shovel, ready to un-cover more of what Meggen thought might be a possible post hole. The second swish of my trowel revealed yet another sherd of medieval pottery nice and pinky orange coloured and blackened on the interior, this makes three finds since yesterday and made me well happy having resigned myself just days ago, that charcoal was actually a great find, I’ll be finding Centurian helmets by the afternoon, then it came.

The heavens opened and never let up until it was agreed that it was foolhardy to continue and we gave in to the famously reliable Scottish weather. Meanwhile at the Neolithic site, reports were coming in that Matt had found the first piece of Neolithic pottery undoubtedly worked loose by me the last time I was up there, but all credit to the B team for finding it. Roll on tomorrow.

Clark

*****

Although we stepped out of the minibus into mizzling rain, our enthusiasm didn’t seem to be too dampened down…not least because we knew there were pies for lunch.

The team of us digging the henge (Leaf, Lauren, Alex and me) made a lot of progress in the ditch section today; although the more we dig, the more confused I get about exactly what was going on there! The ditch of the henge seems to have been filled in and opened up several times across a long time period, but so far it is a bit of a challenge to try to untangle exactly what order it all happened in. As we worked away, we even came across the action-hero of the worm world, Arnold Wormenegger, who did not flinch even as we mattock away the soil round about him!

Things seem to be going well elsewhere in the trench too – Kirsty has started work on the lovely little ‘baby-henge’ to the south of the main henge; and several sherds of possibly Neolithic pottery have turned up in various places. There is even some from the henge ditch, as well as some worked quartz. I’m not sure what it says about me, but I feel that this more than makes up for spending hours in a soggy field dripping with rain.

The rain is persistent though, and gets heavier as the day goes on. By lunchtime we are all wet through, and filling in any kind of records is a lost cause, so we decide to call it a day (after eating the pies and cakes), to avoid damaging the archaeology. And so we clean off all the tools and troop back down to the minibus.

But, as if the excitement of the prehistoric pottery isn’t enough (and believe it or not, there are actually some people who do not seem impressed with the little crumbly black sherds (I do not understand these people!)), there is more drama as we get onto the minibus. Try as we may, it will not start…so we all get out into the rain again. After a quick game of ‘I spy’, we get fed up waiting for the RAC, and manage to get the bus going with a push start.

Hopefully our waterproofs will have time to dry out before tomorrow.

Rebecca

*****

I was doing my second round of walkover survey today. Of course, it was bucketing down. Reckon last week’s rain dance went a bit too well!

Basically, we were going back to an area which had been surveyed in 2007, this time mapping out the features, which were mostly the old field boundaries. First of all, we took a walk around the area, getting a proper look at the features and trying to work out where they all went and how they all relate to each other. I’m finding this landscape archaeology really interesting. Excavation’s great, but there’s only so much you can see in a hole in the ground on the valley floor. This really gives you a broader impression of how people are using and re-using their landscape.

We also tried to get some sketches done and notes taken, but by this point the rain was making it impossible to do anything, so we retreated back to the van for lunch.

The afternoon was more successful, despite all of us being soaked. We took it in turns to go exploring the features and learning how to use the GPS – which looks pretty daunting at first with its satellite signals and up to 60cm accuracy and I was pretty sure I was going to break it – but actually, it was pretty simple… as long as you remember to hold it the right way. So we managed to get a lot of the boundaries mapped out on that all right, except for one bit where the signal went haywire and we ended up with a weird zig-zag halfway along one of them. Hopefully we can get that sorted with the rest of the correction process. And hopefully the weather gods of Forteviot will be a bit kinder to us when we go back up tomorrow!

Kirsten

2009-08-13T23:28:00.000+01:00

Day 11: 13/08/09

It was a successful day all 'round today and much was accomplished.

It was Craig's turn to tell about his day on the cemetery site:

Today I laboured at the Forteviot cemetery site. T’was a beautiful day, with lovely sunshine throughout. There was no rain as I don’t think there was any rain dance. Brilliant! This was my first time at the cemetery, and so the day began with a tour guide around all four corners of the site. Very interesting.

My day was occupied with shovelling, hoeing, and more shovelling. So I wont bore you with any more of that. But the day was raised out of the ordinary with a reconstruction of Woodstock. Well, not really. We just had a stereo with Lawrence’s Woodstock c.d.s blazing the dig. Really retro. Although I did miss Ben and Jamie’s famous rendition of the Jungle Book song: “I wana be like you”.

During the day I did however have a revelation or two. First of all I am really, really, really un-fit. I mean five minutes of troweling and I’m flipping knackered. Secondly, that archaeology is very different from what I initially thought it would be like. It is much broader than I first thought. And last but not least, I need a proper holiday abroad. Change of scenery and all.

Overall the day was tiring. I think some of us were feeling the strain. I hope it is just because we are at the half way point in the field school. Here’s hoping the enthusiasm will pick up towards the last third.

Good bye and good night!!!!!!!!!!

Craig

2009-08-12T22:30:00.000+01:00

Day 10: 12/08/09

At the henge site Anna writes:

Things are coming along quite well at the henge site. Several features are being excavated and everyone is getting a chance to do one. A few artefacts were found today on site. There was some burnt bone found in the ditch section. Dene found a piece which was jet black which he suspects could possibly have been part of a bracelet. Also some modern pieces of white pottery were found. The weather eventually delayed any more work. The rain made excavating more difficult to accomplish.

An STV crew came to the site today for some coverage of the recent developments and of the work that is being done. The footage centred on the cap stone that was recently removed to reveal the cist. An interview with Kenny Brophy was conducted on site. The footage will be shown tomorrow night at 6pm.

Anna

Meanwhile at the cemetery site Robert reports:

Today I got to go back to the cemetery site. The last time I was there we were removing the soil with the hoes. Today I got to trowel. In the morning I was given a section to trowel with the others. We found a piece of worked agate in area J before break. By the first break I was asked to write this blog so I went around taking some pictures: one shows the area that we dug and started after the break. The two most surprising finds that we found was a piece of worked Arran Pitchstone and a small copper alloy pin head (pictured) both in the same context and area. They were in fact very close to each other about a metre apart. These two pieces I found whilst troweling. We couldn’t find the rest of the pin head so we decided to bag the soil and to dry sieve tonight, which I volunteered to do. In the same area and context we found some roman pottery, some green-glazed medieval pottery; two pieces of medieval pottery; some medieval white gritty ware; some white gritty-glazed. The last thing we found was a hammerstone in some cleaning in area I. Those who weren’t troweling were drawing sections and plans. After lunch we bagged the soil but by about three o’clock we had to abandon the site due to terrible rain the site started to flood.

Robert

And from the promontory enclosure site Cathy spins a tale:

Since the momentous day when the promontory enclosure trench was de-turfed and the fibula found in the north end of the trench there have been several developments.

Despite early difficulties identifying distinct contexts, mainly due to a mixture of bright sunlight and similarities between deposits, the ditch of the hillfort has been identified; with an extent of 4m located within our trench. Pre–excavation, the ditch already has several distinct fills and will be excavated to determine the depth and stratigraphy. Next to our ditch the remains of a possible rampart are also starting to become clearer.

In the north of the trench there has been a more complicated situation with several linear features and possible stone settings. These have been recorded and fully excavated. Due to the small finds in these areas, including several sherds of pottery, these features have been identified as ridge and furrow.

Today the interpretation of these features as ridge and furrow has been further bolstered by the discovery of a curved metal blade, thought to be a farm tool. These features and the sickle point towards a region where ridge and furrow cultivation was practiced.

Picture the scene:
An expanse of golden barley; stretching into the distance, soft rays of the setting sun are cast over the hills to the west.

A weary farmer sits down at the side of the field, tired and thirsty after toiling under the hot sun since dawn, harvesting the year’s crop. Another few long days of work to finish the harvest, all the time hoping the weather doesn’t break and leave her family in danger of going hungry over the winter.

Enjoying the quiet moment before returning to the bustle of her home she sips water from her worn white jug, a relief for her throat, dry from all the dust rising in the fields.

Looking down at her sickle she sighed, it was blunted and worn out from the past six year of use. Dropping it to the ground she stood up and stretched, it was time to send her son to the market anyway, he could trade some of the crop for a new one.

Turning to leave she stumbled, crushing the jug beneath her foot, muttering under her breath she abandoned the useless fragments, she would have to make another, yet another job to fit in at the busiest time of the year….

Cathy

2009-08-11T22:07:00.000+01:00

Day 9: 11/08/09

Today the news of the cist burial has been taken up by the press... look for it in the Scottish newspapers.

On site the day started with further drawing and recording at both Forteviot trenches, but soon the heavens opened and the rain fell - which slowed work. Although digging was stopped at the henge site for the afternoon, excavation continued on the cemetery site.

Sara recounts her experience at the Forteviot Pictish cemetery site:

Excavations at the cemetery site are well underway by this point in the field-school and many features were being excavated including; postholes, ditch features and what are thought to be Pictish graves surrounding a barrow feature. The weather was quite horrific and the area in front of the spoil heap started to resemble a swamp; however, we donned our waterproofs and kept working. With work making steady progress, I spent the majority of the morning setting up the total station, taking levels for some section drawings and retrieved the co-ordinate points for specific small finds; later planning an obscure gravel patch which had become apparent in the west of the site. Having planned the potential feature, the afternoon was spent defining the edges and trying to understand what could have created the strange L-shaped patch which showed potential to be quite deep. As soon as the gravel fill started to be taken out; about 9 million frogs appeared and so several people were recruited for ‘frog rescue 09’. It became apparent that the feature was probably the result of a large animal burrow and that the gravel fill was the natural that underlay the silt. However, towards the end of the day, charcoal began to appear in the silty layer, which underlay some of the gravel which confused everybody and remains a mystery. As mentioned, the spoil heap did not fare well when the floods came and so the very last part of the day today saw myself and another giving it a good tidy.

Sara

2009-08-11T00:36:00.000+01:00

Day 8: 10/08/09

Today was a day off - a much needed break for all after a busy and exciting week in the heat. Although we were relaxing and taking in the local sites in Strathearn, the conservator at AOC Archaeology was very busy examining the material from the cist retrieved from the henge site. She X-rayed some of the lumps of material and one of the X-rays clearly shows the bronze object to be a dagger! And after some more careful examination it appears that the handle has been enlaid with gold bands...this is truly a magnificent find. More will follow as the examination continues.

Tessa

Day 7: 09/08/09

Sunday was full of recording and planning. Sami writes about his experience at the Forteviot henge site - the process of excavation

As before, the workday started after a hearty breakfast at 9 am. Today I was working at the large henge site at Forteviot. My first job was to take an area down around an inch, so that any stone features and the colours in the soil would be more prominent. Not the most exciting job in the world, but it has to be done if we want to get anywhere. That took me most of the day, but seeing the features clear as day was worth it. For lunch, we had sandwiches with pickle and a meat of unknown origin. For some strange reason, I was apparently the only one that liked them.

After lunch I was assigned my very own feature to dig, a suspected posthole on the southern side of the trench. It was about a meter in diameter, and next to another posthole that was already being excavated. I began by cleaning out the edges of the feature, with the goal of identifying a ramp that would have been used to lower the post into the hole. Had a good start by finding a quartz flake, but unfortunately we couldn’t identify a ramp. We remained unfazed by this setback and separated the feature into 2 halves, one of which I will be excavating as a means to give us a good look into the function of the pit. Right after we set up the dividing line, it started to rain cats and dogs, causing us to promptly retreat back to our lodgings.

Sami

2009-08-11T00:19:00.000+01:00

Day 6 continued...

Work continued on the Forteviot cemetery site. Many of the cut features still proved to be elusive - drying in the heat and becoming difficult to see. Nonetheless, there was success in tracing the ditch of the large square enclosure - a portion of which lies underneath a broad silt deposit - and therefore needing further excavation. In the area where the ditch is visible a section was excavated by Kirsten.

While most students gained excavation experience on the main sites other students were learning to survey elsewhere- Haileigh has written about hers below...

Tessa
*********************************

"Today I worked on Standing Building Survey with three other students. The building in question was a doocot at the Green of Invermay. The building resembled a hexagonal shaped tower, perhaps five meters in height, made largely of sandstone. We viewed the inside, which had small compartments which would be used for pigeons to nest.

Dr. Hall and Prof. Driscoll explained to us a brief history of the building, which could potentially be as early as 17^th century, as well as teaching us the basics of standing building survey. The archaeological aspect of the survey is important in that it highlights different phases of work such as extensions and what this can tell us about the building and surrounding at this particular time. This did become apparent during the survey, as we could see where stone and mortar had been conserved-for example, some of the material used to replace the older harling had gone a different colour of grey and seemed less gritty, and it was evident this patch had been renewed.

We worked in pairs to each record a side of the wall, below a baseline which sat roughly 2.20m above ground. My partner, Eilidh, did the majority of the drawing (due to her artistic talents) on a 1:10m scale on tracing paper over a grid of 1mm, and I did most of the measuring of the stones and features in the wall-communication is a vital aspect of this survey. Our side was the North side which was well shaded by trees. There were no real ‘features’, but a huge amount of stone and mortar work, which could be tricky and meticulous to accurately record, measure and transcribe to paper, but it was an enjoyable task and good to do something completely different from the digging that is most commonly associated with archaeology.

In the afternoon, we were taken on a mini field-trip to the houses on the estate of Invermay. The first house we observed was a potentially 17^th century castle with later additions such as barn buildings. The castle features were evident on the wall as the outlines of gun-loops (now blocked up) were clearly visible. The front of the house had a protruding semi-circular wall where the door stood, probably with a staircase inside, and above the door was a triangle feature which included four letters, likely to mark initials of two individuals who had married. Professor Driscoll suggested that this may have been an earlier feature which was later moved to the new entrance. Furthermore, stones on the chimney can show that the roof was originally thatched, as these stones traditionally were used to re-direct water from the top of thatch. Observing this collaboration of old and new in one building can show the benefits of standing building survey, as small details can show how buildings were used at certain times in their life-cycles."

Haileigh

2009-08-10T23:55:00.000+01:00

Day 6: 08/08/09

At the henge, although there was a lot to do across the trench, everyone was interested in the cist and what was being excavated. Due to the fragility of the remains in the cist the conservator had decided the best method of excavating the concentration of organic material and bronze object was to carefully encase it and remove it in several large chunks. This material could then be examined in detail in a laboratory. As the rest of the cist contents were excavated (after careful planning and recording the evening before) it came as a surprise that much of the visible fragments were wood - or more accurately bark - no bone had survived. The pieces of bark (likely birch) were recorded and removed from the cist. Lining the base of the cist were rounded pebbles and cobbles - all of which appeared to have been carefully placed. Some of the cobbles were quartz. The Forteviot cist is unique in many respects - but from the shape of the stonelined 'coffin' and situation it is thought to be Bronze Age--but dating the organics should help us accurately date this feature.

Tessa

2009-08-10T22:53:00.000+01:00

Amazing Day 5 continued...

Meanwhile... back at the henge site we had arranged for a crane to come a lift the megalith discovered in a pit in 2008. This was a big event for the whole SERF team and everyone came to watch the lift. We had spent the days running up to the lift speculating what was under the large stone. Once two straps were on the crane lifted the stone was fairly quickly. There were many cries of amazement as a chamber lined with stone was revealed. This chamber had not be opened for many hundreds/thousands of years. The stone lined cist was thought to have been a burial of an important person. The contents were fragmentary and at first inspection it was not certain what had remained. However, once there was a closer look inside it was clear that there was very fragile organic material at least at one end of the cist and evidence of a bronze object and therefore the conservators had to be called in. The excavation of the cist was going to take time...

As the sun set that evening several of us stayed on site. In the low light Ewan Campbell noticed that on the underside of the megalith, that was now on the side of the trench, there was a carving! The symbol was curved - perhaps a stylised axe or hammer? It was off to search for any known parallels...

Tessa

2009-08-10T22:29:00.000+01:00

Day 5: 07/08/09

Friday was a very eventful day - with amazing discoveries. At the promontory enclosure excavation we had finally removed all of the modern ploughsoil and were excavating what was interpreted as a Late Medieval (probably c. 17th century) ploughsoil. Babs, a student from Aberdeen University, was given the task of cleaning the section as she was excavating down- I like a clean, straight section. In this section she uncovered a copper alloy clothes pin or fibula (pictured), which we think dates to the 1st-2nd centuries AD. This is a great find and even greater for Babs - as it was her first ever archaeological find!

Tessa

2009-08-06T20:31:00.000+01:00

Day 4: 06/08/09

Today was my first full day of assuming responsibility for the drawings on the henge site, and I have to admit it I was a wee bit apprehensive! But with a bit of help and guidance from Uncle Dene and the Funk Brothers I think it turned out alright. My duties included laying out grids in the trench (which was actually started yesterday) and then taping them out so the different parts of the site could be systematically and accurately recorded. Once that was sorted out we took volunteers off from other trench work and I’d explain to them the whole process of planning, why we use the materials we use, why we record at this stage, tips on good practice etc. A lot of students (myself included!) get quite nervous about putting pencil to paper for the first time. This was even more pronounced today as the weather has been drying the exposed soil making features hard to define. However I’m pleased to say that the people we’ve had planning so far have all been eager to learn and have produced some excellent results. It’s also a real gratifying experience to pass on knowledge and skills to people who seem genuinely enthused and happy to take part.

This pre-excavation stage is always exciting because you know that you’re not far away from actually excavating features and hopefully figuring out whatever story the site has to tell. With tomorrow comes more planning and, weather permitting, the lifting of the Megalith. Good times.

Liam

2009-08-06T20:27:00.000+01:00

Day 4: 06/08/09

So today I was at the Pictish Cemetery and the first task of the day was mattocking.
Dr. Campbell started by sectioning off part of the site which contained a very unusual, large, square, enclosure ditch for a Pictish site. In the heat the mattocking was quite difficult work, which wasn’t helped by the sun drying out the soil making it difficult to see the features of the ditch. However, it was this part of the day when the most significant find was discovered – a 13/14^th century piece of pottery (as shown in the photo). The mattocking was finally finished just before lunch, after which we began trowelling back to clean the area, in order to define the feature. It was then when Anna found her first archaeological find ever, yay. On site another team were also mattocking in the afternoon; they were looking for features inside the enclosure and through this process found a posthole, how exciting! Meanwhile, throughout the day Carmen and Natalia were surveying next to the site using Ground Penetrating Radar – looking for the ditch coming out the southern side of the trench. Unfortunately their battery ran out; however they are hopeful to get a chance to finish it off tomorrow. The day finished off with a quick photography lesson from Dr. Campbell – illustrating the ditch and the hard days work of day four.

Eilidh

2009-08-05T21:36:00.000+01:00

On day 3 we also broke turf (well ...actually cut through the oats) of our small excavation trench of a promontory fort near Forteviot. The sun was shining, but we had shade nearby. We have just started digging through the topsoil by hand. It is slow going but I hope that we can get through the topsoil tomorrow.

Tessa

2009-08-05T21:31:00.000+01:00

Although we are now able to update this blog from the comfort of our accommodation (and not in a dark parking lot in an industrial estate near Perth), we seem to be having technical difficulty in uploading photos or other media -- a film revealing of the stone in the Neolithic trench -- hopefully we will have this fixed tomorrow.

Tessa

2009-08-05T21:19:00.000+01:00

Day 3: 05 August 09

Over in the Pictish cemetery trench, we played hide and seek with our features all day yesterday as the sun dried them out. We knew they were there and sure enough, this morning they emerged again: so far we have one definite circular barrow with a central grave and some possible postholes associated with it, a cluster of probable dug graves, a few other postholes, some remains of rig and furrow and the ditch of the ‘big enclosure.’ The site has given us a few surprises including deeper soil than we might have expected in places and some great finds. Today’s star find is a commemorative political medallion from 1881!

Yesterday and today we’ve had the team cleaning back to help define our features and we’ve also dug a few sondages to see the enclosure ditch in more detail. Everyone’s been putting in a mammoth effort and there will most definitely be some sore muscles tomorrow morning. We have a little more cleaning to do tomorrow in our ‘trench across the fence,’ but having finished our pre-excavation plan, we should be ready to look a bit deeper tomorrow.

Meggen

Meanwhile....
Today we started to try to make sense of the range of features uncovered in the Neolithic trench. Because this is a site that was discovered as cropmarks, nothing is visible above the surface and so all the archaeology is negative – postholes, pits, ditches and so on. Because of natural processes, over millennia these holes in the ground have gradually filled in. Our job is to recognise where these negative features are in the trench and then empty them out, to get an idea of what they may have looked like in prehistory. The job is made more difficult because often the holes have filled with the gravels that they sit within, making it difficult to recognise features. So as with most gravel sites, troweling is the key way of trying to make sense of the chaos of soils and gravels in the trench. It may be tedious and hard work, but in fact it has an effect similar to polishing something – colour changes become more distinct and everything becomes a little clearer. This process is also helped by drying and weathering – the longer the floor of the trench is exposed, the more features will become apparent, looking a little darker than the surrounding natural gravels. Pits and postholes can magically appear overnight one or two weeks into the excavation. This makes digging in gravels a frustrating, but also exciting, experience, and many of the team are working on such a site for the first time.

Thanks to a lot of hard work, the whole site had been troweled once, twice in some places by the end of the day. This has made things a lot clearer, and allowed us to move onto the next stages of recording, including photography and planning (drawing the surface of the trench). The trench is pretty complicated, with a dozen different targets for excavation which we’ll cover in the blog in the coming weeks, clustered around a Neolithic henge monument (c2500BC). Today a main focus was re-opening a part of the trench we worked on last year. We uncovered a huge sandstone block buried in a large pit full of rubble, and we are cleaning around this again to allow some heavy lifting equipment to come in and move it on Friday. We’re pretty excited about this, with the possibility that the stone may be covering a grave pit or cist (or there might be nothing underneath it except more gravel!) Planning also started across much of the trench, and Gordy started to excavate one of the postholes of a possible timber circle which surrounds the henge. Quite a lot of burnt bone was found during troweling of the henge interior, suggesting one or more cremation burials may be lurking in there somewhere. We should make some serious progress tomorrow with more good weather, so there may be some more dramatic news tomorrow (or I’ll just ramble on about gravels archaeology again…).

Dr Funk

2009-08-04T21:50:00.000+01:00

Day 2: 4.8.09

Ah, how quickly the need for a cooked breakfast comes back…

As we split for the first time to the Neolithic and Pictish trenches (using the time honoured tradition of who sat on which bus), this poor individual can only describe the joy of the Neolithic trench.

After the fast-paced hoeing action of yesterday, the cleaning continued on at lightning speed. With the trench suitably clean, trowelling got underway so those who stand on the spoil heap and point could see what lovely features we had.

After the almost finds-free seasons in 07 and 08, it was with great excitement that we found two knapped cores (and another possible quartz core). As well as this, some nice pieces of burnt bone were found.

The large monolith that was uncovered (typically) in the last few days of the ’08 season was re-found and mostly uncovered. This is ahead of it being lifted on Friday (with a lot of luck). Preparations are coming on for the hoards of visitor-types we are expecting to come up to see it lifted, including pokey-sticks and hazard tape J.

Tonight we welcomed our prodigal project director Dr Brophy. He was clearly missing the archaeology so much that his first action was to go onto an accies forum and check his fantasy football team.

Things can only go up from here…

2009-08-04T21:47:00.000+01:00

Day 1: 3.8.09

Well, here we are again… SERF. The wonderful area around Forteviot will once again ring to the sounds of mattocks, trowels, and regular shouts of “We’ll find it in the section!”.

On the buses on the way up, the banter was flowing freely, and those not used to the witty repartee were soon initiated J. After only minor rearranging we all found our rooms (only some of which we were locked out of) and had a hearty packed lunch (or nothing for those who didn’t bring their own).

Starting as we meant to go on, we headed out to site for a short afternoon’s work. This year’s team being an excellent bunch and the soil being particularly favourable, we soon had the measure of many of the features that were contained in the monster Neolithic trench (unlike some other years I could mention). With much of the trench hoed, we headed back for our first dinner, and more importantly, the first “supplies” run to Tesco.

Now only a slightly too late night for some separated us from our first full day’s digging…

2009-08-04T21:41:00.000+01:00

We opened the henge trench on the Friday before the dig began in earnest. On Saturday local metaldetectorists were on site of the cemetery trench to help the archaeologists survey the topsoil for small finds before it was excavated by JCB. We found many small iron objects – which are likely bits of modern machinery. Several musket balls and a few pieces of copper alloy objects, one of which was decorated were also found. Each of the find spots were recorded. We then stripped the topsoil off the cemetery area and found traces of rig and furrow. In between the furrows glimpses of the ditch of the large square enclosure could be seen…and soon they would be excavated.

2009-06-08T17:19:00.001+01:00