For the first time during the SERF project began one week ago, the skies were cast over with grey clouds when we arrived at the foot of Castle Craig. The wind was crisp and no one had to slather on sun cream before “digging in”.

            At Trench Nine, the wonder Dr. Tessa Poller joined the usual four workers and, immediately, finds of all sorts began popping up. Beginning with some disintegrating bone and the enamel tooth caps from a pig, the finds began growing more and more interesting. There were a number of bronze fragments, folded, and parts used for casting. A small piece of silver was found and a Roman coin, barely recognizable from the small stone chips. Some lead weights were also found in

Trench Nine. Finally, we found some slag, changing the hypothesis that the walls we have found in the trench were from the guardhouse to a possible work area for metal workings.

            “On top”, the team found the inner and outer walls of the broch which they celebrated with a ritual cheer. The broch floor has also been completely revealed in Trench One.

            The day ended with the teams from all the sites of SERF field school having a tour of the work done at each site. Everyone was appropriately impressed with Castle Craig.

Hello out there, Hilary here! Yet another day of lovely weather for SERF.

Shall we have a little introduction to Dunning, where my team is? We are digging next to St Serf’s churchyard wall in hopes of finding an older boundary to the churchyard and possibly some dating evidence to tell us when it was constructed. Over that past few days we’ve been clearing off the modern junk that has accumulated over the recent years. In the upper rubbish we did find a few treasures in the form of two bullet shells, a 17^th century coin, and some painted window glass.

Our potential Jacobite burned building quickly became a circa 1950’s coal shed when we realized we were digging up coal rather than charcoal. Today we finished recording the excavation of that feature and moved on to other things; a nice big pit with clay at the bottom for instance. From said clay we constructed a makeshift trench-deity during tea break.  

We also have several sondages (a trench within a trench) cut into the bank that abuts the churchyard wall; all of them are showing different features and there is consequently much head scratching going on.  But in the sondage I was digging I found a ditch-like feature than just keeps going down. We are hoping it is the older boundary we are searching for but more excavation is in order before we can be confident about that. Unfortunately tomorrow is my day to learn standing building and topographic surveying so I will be unable to continue to excavate my cool new feature. On the other hand, tomorrow I get to learn standing building and topographic survey!

I’m Chris, and I’d like to take the time to tell you about the goings-on at the site I’ve been working on at SERF over the last week! I’m a second year student of History and Archaeology at Glasgow, and this is my first excavation, so it’s been pretty exciting, and also a definite learning experience. Friday night was a heavy, heavy night, so 9AM Saturday morning archaeology at Leadketty was, it has to be said, the best way to clear fifty-odd hangovers.  Last night’s booze was replaced by thoughts of rings of postholes as we carried the tools to the three trenches through the bracing Perthshire morning, bright eyed and all fresh to a man.  Almost.

 The Leadketty site itself is a really interesting area – cropmarks had revealed to us the presence of what looked like several monumental circles, so trenches were opened up to investigate them. I’ve been working in Trench 1 (of 3, imaginatively named Trenches 1, 2 & 3), dug to investigate the presence of a possible timber circle, with four exciting huge postholes in the centre. Possibly a structure!  There are also a couple of medieval ploughstrikes. The other trenches also held postholes, and one of them, Trench 2 also contained an earthen circle, with a large, suspicious dark mark in the centre – it’s been affectionately named the Treasure Pit. Of course, Trench 2’s features are all clustered to one end, the other having a prehistoric stream running through it, so they say.

Starting off excavating a posthole after a brief warm-up Trench Dance to appease the twin deities of Leadketty (The Sunburn God, and the Irn Bru God, see picture below.), our Trench found possible Neolithic pottery within five minutes. Excitement mounted, as below this and amongst it was a layer of charcoal and charred bone. Just when we thought the Trench had no more to offer, another posthole revealed large sherds of Grooved Ware, the first found in six years work at SERF. The discovery moved seasoned archaeologists to dance for joy, creating, in a move that will live in infamy, the “Groovy Ware Dance,” which will not be dignified with further comment.

Trench 3 had already thrown up a beautiful example of a lithic the day before, close to the surface of one of its huge postholes. Today, once again it began to produce pottery, and even a piece of jasper, along with samples of charred bone and charcoal, just like Trench 1. Trench 2, for so long barren of finds had also thrown up a small sherd, but then again, the Treasure Pit is only just being opened. Who can tell what may lie within? With so much found so close to the surface of so few postholes, we can only guess what Leadketty is going to surprise us with.

I’m Greer, a nineteen year-old archaeology student from Glasgow University. I have loved being outdoors and looking at really old stuff for as long as I remember. And that’s what I’ve been doing today. I’m working in trench 1 of the Castle Craig excavation, an archaeological project which is part of SERF project, and which intends to assess the suitability of undertaking a total excavation of the site. So far this site is known to contain the remains of an Iron Age  broch, but also a later fortification around the edge of the hill thought to date from the twelfth century.

In trench 1, we finally reached the floor in the inside of the broch, thus completing a job that has occupied us since the beginning of the week. Reaching the floor of trench 1 was the highlight of my day but not our only accomplishment. We also extended the southern and western edges of our trench as a health and safety measure, because the previous edges were highly unstable and we needed to remove some of the weight of stones and earth from the top of them. These sides of the trench now have a stepped edge, which facilitates access and prevents any large stones falling on the heads of unfortunate diggers. We ended the day with new, safer edges of our trench and were finally able to lift the tarpaulin and contemplate the entirety of the bottom of the trench, which consists of the interior floor of the broch.

In the other areas of the excavation, progress was also made. Trench 9, on the southern side of the hill, extended their trench edges as well and the diggers there were able to conclude that the stones revealed over the last couple of days were indeed part of a wall. Trench 9 also revealed some interesting small finds, including a piece of Roman glass and a Roman melon bead. In Trench 6 the broch wall continued to be exposed, and half an iron knife was found next to one of the wall stones. Trench 8 continues to be a confusing jumble of loose stone and rubble, but today was drawn carefully by the people there, hopefully introducing some sanity into the madness.

Once in a while, I come to the end of a day and feel like I have finally finished a long, drawn-out job. Today was one of those days; after five days of mattocking, shovelling, bucket carrying, stone lifting and earth sieving, I came to the end of the road. I arrived at my destination. We reached the floor of the broch. From a wider perspective, the excavation at Castle Craig seems to be progressing happily and continues to challenge those involve with new questions every day. As structures are revealed and small finds appear amidst the dark earth, the mist is lifted and the picture clears every day.

Hi there, I’m Astrid, student at Aberdeen University (about to enter third year) and I’m very happy of being part of the SERF project for this year’s session.

Another very hot, exciting day at Leadketty comes to an end. Our site consists of three trenches. In the first trench we revealed many round features marking a circle. The second trench, in which I’m working, consists of a mini henge feature with a centre. The south terminal of the henge is burnt and we also found burnings around it. In addition to this, under the top soil we found medieval furrows. The features of postholes came to the surface in our third trench. Today we made a very exciting find in the third trench which was a worked flint.

  

We started our day by finishing our pre-excavation plan drawings. The original features that were dug up will be lost during the process of excavation and due to this it is crucial to take exact records of the site before excavation can start. The drawings not only include the co-ordinates of the feature but also enable us to re-view the feature once it has been excavated.

After we finished our drawings we were shown how to take photographs of the features we are about to excavate. It is important that there are no tools, people or shadows included in the picture. The photograph should only be taken when there are scales put up next to the feature. We should make sure to take a straight picture and to record the photograph in the record book.

After the recording we started to excavate the centre feature of the henge in half section. During this process it is important to keep to the feature’s edge and to not include the natural soil. We are working by stratigraphy. While excavating the features we have to take precise notes on the texture, the colour and other details. It is also significant to take samples of the layers we are excavating.

I’m really thrilled what tomorrow might bring to the surface and very proud of being part of such a great project and team!

 

Hey, I’m David, a Glasgow University student entering third year and taking part in the SERF project for this season. I’m working at Castle Craig, an Iron Age site which when excavated in 2011 revealed a broch – the only broch in the surrounding area, so a very important discovery. This year the site is undergoing excavation again as part of a feasibility study due to its unique nature.

Today I was working in Trench 9, set on the south bank of the hill. The first job of the day was to extend the trench in order to gain better knowledge of a set of tumbled stones discovered the previous day during cleaning. The topsoil was full of tangled roots, which made it very difficult to mattock through. It was time consuming but worth it - the stones exposed now reveal what could potentially be a collapsed wall from a structure or part of a large bank. The feature still needs to be cleaned and looked at in further detail to gain a better idea of what to do next in the excavation process. Ryan scanned the trench with a metal detector today – revealing a lot of possible finds underneath the soil. Trench 8 appears to have 6 finds, one of which may possibly be silver, which could be rather exciting. The detector can’t pick up alloys, which means we must be extra careful when excavating in order to discover pieces of metal such as bronze which has already been found in this particular trench.

On the top of the hill, the three other trenches currently open continue to make progress. Trench 8 in the East was faced with the issue of finding various stones which had tumbled over a slope but with limited finds and no real idea of what exactly occurred in this area. A discovery late in the working day revealed what is thought to be a portion of the outer face of the broch. The team in Trench 6 in the North is continuing to clean back the soil, reaching a medieval occupation layer – revealing a few finds including a possible lead weight. The team also uncovered a piece of the broch wall today. Trench 1 is still being excavated in order to uncover the parts of the broch found last year, but there’s still plenty to go before the full extent of the broch is revealed in the trench. There is also the possibility of a newly discovered posthole which could be excavated in Trench 1 but further investigation will be required.

Hi everyone,

Jules writing to you today! We woke up today energised, excited and in hot pursuit of archaeology in the stupendous sunshine that Perthshire is currently providing.  Day 3 at Castle Craig was more than willing to accommodate us in our quest!

We have been digging, drawing and unearthing some excellent archaeology. In continuing cleaning our trenches and removing some more big stones we exposed some more of the broch (its entrance is teasing us in the ground) and found some more pottery (possibly Roman). Also, and very excitingly, there have been small pieces of lead, copper and bronze found (Woo Hoo!!).

The next few days are looking promising and fingers crossed our hunt for postholes in the rampart shall be accomplished!! Especially since such a find was made last year on the other side of the site. It’s promising to be another exciting time at SERF! Castle Craig is certainly living up to the rave reviews from last year…

 Day 2 at Castle Craig

Hello everyone!!

I’m part of the wonderful team at this exciting site! It’s an Iron Age broch which was later used by the Romans and it was excavated for the first time last year. We arrived there yesterday to set out the four trenches, one of which is a repeat of last year, and start the thrilling task of de-turfing. After many blisters, we are now getting to the good stuff! Today, Ryan went by with the metal detector as the rest of us continued digging. So far, the trench from last year has been cleared out revealing the outer wall and we are starting to hit the big rocks in the new trenches too so hopefully in the next few days we will be able to say a bit more about the structure of the broch. Its’ been slow-going with the trowels but we’ve found a few things of note which is always nice. I, personally, was seriously excited to find a sheep mandible (that’s a jaw bone by the way – a fact I learnt today…). More importantly though we found some small pieces of Roman pottery and a pounding stone along with some other finds. I’m sure there is way more to come so watch this space! Its’ going to be three more weeks of fun in the Scottish sun!

Yvonne

Yvonne and others at Castle Craig deturfing

Ryan using the metal detector on site

Hi Vesa here!! Yesterday we arrived to our accommodation in Strathallan School. After settling down we were introduced to the area of the research and the landscape of the Strathearn Valley. During the same evening we also got out hands dirty for the first time, as we begun cleaning up the trenches in Leadketty. This morning powered by a massive breakfast, we were divided in to three groups and sent into the sites that are being excavated during the summer 2012. The sites are located at Leadketty, Castle Craig and the village of Dunning, and we expect them to reveal more information about the meaning of the landscape in Forteviot in the past. After a day of endless shovelling, hoeing, mattocking and barrowing the site were begging to take shape! We gladly await the treasure that they are hiding. The weather was sunny and the first day passed quickly, and we were looking forward to opening a nice cold beer!

A new season!

Hi everyone,

Well, SERF are back for another season of fieldwork in and around Strathearn. This year we are looking at a variety of sites, including: the early medieval evidence at St Serf's Church, Dunning; an early prehistoric palisaded enclosure, a henge monument and a post defined structure at Leadketty; the broch we discovered last year at Castle Craig not to mention a couple of other sites that will be visited and surveyed by the survey team.

This year we also have the BIG Dig in Dunning. This is a programme of events aimed at getting the local community involved in archaeology and exploring the past around Dunning. If you are interested in getting involved a full programme of events inlcuding lectures, workshops and learning how to dig can be found here.


Trenches at Leadketty were laid out yesterday and Kenny is up supervising the opening of them today. Tools and equipment will be ferried up over the next couple of days. The students arrive at Strathallan next Monday (6th August) and we will get started with some extensive cleaning on the Tuesday. Hope to see you then!

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