Welcome to SERF 2011!

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.