A quick update from Wellhill:

We are continuing to dig the large pits with Bronze Age pot coming up. We are nearing the bottom of the quarter sections in some of the pits and opening others up to investigate them to see how they compare to the ones we have dug so far.

The probable Neolithic pits are continuing to produce more pottery and some lithic finds. The pit Martina is digging is a bit complicated and turns out to have been a large pit which has then filled in been recut, filled with natural material and then has been recut again and filled with the charcoal, pottery and lithic rich fill.

Martina's pit

 

In Trench 2 Hollie has been finishing up the last feature in the trench - a shallow pit filled with burnt bone and charcoal. Star find of the dig so far (especially according to Dene) was a quantity of burnt hazelnut shell. This is great news for us because it is normally picked, eaten and then burnt in a short space of time so really good for carbon dating. It probably indicates that the pit has been filled with waste from a fireplace. Nice one Hollie!

It was a really hot day today so the students did a great job digging in the hot and dusty conditions. Some of the staff didn't do so well.......

Ginger people are not made for sun!

Thanks to Jan Brophy for all the home baking. It was amazing!

An update on the exciting things happening at Millhaugh Barrow:

As well as all of the other things going on at SERF this year, a small crack team of diggers have been working away on the outskirts of Dunning, working on a possible prehistoric barrow (burial mound) called Millhaugh. This mound, which is visible from the main road and across from the Maggie Wall monument, is tree-covered but was only identified as a possible prehistoric monument in the 1990s. It is a fairly big mound, about 20m across, and almost 2m high in the middle.

We started work on this on Monday 23^rd July and we have made great progress, and are already fairly sure this is a Neolithic or Bronze Age barrow. We started by moving weeds and nettles, and shifting a lot of modern field clearance material, before removing the upper turf level. Very quickly we started to reveal the prehistoric monument, sealed beneath a much larger modern field clearance cairn.

The strategy is to dig a slice out of the barrow as if it were a big cake, so we can see the layers inside. Our trench only measures 2m by 11m so we are only really carrying out a keyhole investigation into the barrow, and we still have loads to do, but already we can tell that the top level of the barrow was probably some kind of turf capping. This overlies a thick rubble and earth layer which we are still investigating. The whole thing was defined by a kerb of large rounded boulders.

We’ll update the blog as we get deeper into the heart of the mound. Thanks for a great week’s work to Rebecca, Brenda, Josh, Felix, Andrew and Ashleigh.

Kenny and Helen

Laying out the trench post vegetation clearance

 Kerb!

Time for an update on our site in Kincladie Wood: a Roman temporary camp just north of Dunning which we have been excavating for the past week. A small section of the northern bank and ditch survives as an upstanding monument and this is the area which we are investigating.

Dr. Philip Freeman inspects the trench midway through deturfing.

A spread of rubble immediately north of the monument appears to fill the upper portion of the ditch, but only in the western half of the trench. From this layer and the brown silt in front of it we recovered a number of finds from the modern period, including a number of fragments from a glass battery.

Kieran, Jo, Traci and Jacqueline progressively excavate a clayey context, with evidence of considerable tree root disturbance, below the uppermost layer of the bank. To the right, Ross is investigating the full extent of this clay layer. 

This is how the trench appeared after the sixth day of excavation. A number of contexts have been revealed, cleaned and recorded. At this stage the ostensibly simple "bank and ditch" was becoming more complex, meaning there is much to explore in the days ahead!

Wellhill still Potty! The last couple of days have been filled with potty goodness. The large pit features in Trench 1 have been producing lots more Bronze Age pot as well as charcoal rich layers. The smaller Neolithic features have been throwing up more Grooved Ware and some lithics as well (much to Denes excitement!).

                                      

                                        Some of the Wellhill students (and Dene) having a break.

Rory excavating a pottery rich pit.

Multiple pottery sherds in situ.

Trench 2 has been busy recording a couple of excavated features including a very truncated cremation pit with burnt bone and charcoal carefully excavated and sampled by Ian. We had a bit of excitement yesterday when Danny (just visiting for the day) cleaned back an area to reveal a small pit filled with burnt material and large pieces of Bronze Age pottery (all nice rim sherds). This is his first ever archaeological find, after years of excavating!

                                       

Rim sherd in situ in small pit

Pot in Trench 2 looking towards Ian's cremation pit

Danny looking well chuffed! :)

GROOOOOVY BABY!

Wellhill has been a hive of activity all day. First thing this morning Becca started the excavation of a small pit that looked choc-a-block full of charcoal. Once scrape later and we found out it was also full of Grooved Ware! This sort of pottery is associated with the late Neolithic (c. 4000 years ago) so we now think we have a series of late Neolithic features as well as some evidence for early Bronze Age activity.

Right on cue the students started finding sherds of Bronze Age pottery from the upper fills of the large circular pits. These respect the ardmarks we have interpreted as being part of a Bronze Age field system. The ardmarks also cut some of the features which we now think are likely to be late Neolithic.

We found more pottery today than we have over the whole of many of the previous seasons, hopefully lots more to follow as we get stuck into the features over the next couple of weeks. Thanks to all the students who have put in a load of hard work this week and particularly to Becca who found loads of pottery but more importantly brought us cake. No digging tomorrow as we are all having a well deserved rest after a week of exciting discoveries.

                                                               Becca 'potluck' Younger

Has anyone seen this man? He was last seen eating a jar of pickled eggs and a macaroni cheese pie with lashings of hot sauce.............

Work continues at Wellhill. We have been planning for the last two days, mapping out the features in the trench which is not as straightforward as it could be due to some dry weather. Here is what the trench looks like most of the time:

We then clean the trench and start to draw the edges of the features:

Every now and then there are tiny glimpses of where the features are, particularly after a wee shower of rain where the features suddenly pop out: 

The circular features you can see in these photos are some of the nine massive pits we have in the trench. The larger ones are up to 5-6m in diameter and they seem to be drying out with a band or ring surrounding a smaller darker blob in the middle. The planning is finishing up now so we will be getting into feature digging tomorrow. Stay posted!

We found a really big worm today! In other news the students at Wellhill learned how to set out the site grid in Trench 1 and 2 and we planned the features in Trench 2. Planning in Trench 1 will start tomorrow.

Hello from the SERF Fieldschool 2014. Staff and students from Glasgow University, Phil from Liverpool Uni and some overseas visitors arrived on site on Saturday to begin another season of work. The sites being dug this year include a prehistoric cropmark complex at Wellhill, a Roman temporary camp in Kincladdie Wood and near Pitcairns House and a prehistoric barrow at Millhaugh. This year we also have Katy Firth from Northlight Heritage running some community excavations in the village of Dunning, walkover survey near Coul and topographic and geophysical at several sites.

Over the last few days we have all been at Wellhill cleaning three large trenches to show up the features. So far we have lots of pits, postholes, and a probable Bronze Age field system with the remains of ardmarks visible. In a completely unprecedented move we found some prehistoric and probably Bronze Age pottery on the first day. Much excitement!

Joss, Phil and Steve have been opening up the Roman temporary camp at Kincladdie and the barrow will be started on Monday.

Keep posted over the next three weeks for more updates.

 

  

Last Days and the End of Castle Law Excavations 2014

Castle Law excavations 2014 is now over.  The final days were very busy and therefore the blog went silent, but here is a picture recap of the last days of the dig and the ultimate destruction of the backfilling team.

I would like to thank everyone that helped on site - it was extreme archaeology that only could be done be an extreme team!  Thank you all!  I would also like to thank the Dupplin Estate and Michael Blanche of Culteuchar farm for letting us carry out our crazy dig. - TP

Sondage through stone 'capping' of bank and leveled area over burnt deposits of earlier bank in Trench F

Alan recording sondage in Trench F

Odd hearth stone on slope in Trench F

Rough cobble surface of hut platform in Trench F

Effie Photos-Jones came along and zapped the area of soil vitrification in Trench E for chemical composition analyses

Neil's sondage through the vitrified bank material on to a layer of black ash and charcoal

Section of vitrified bank on the vestiges of an earlier bank

A rock cut ditch was discovered filled with large boulders at the base of the bank (who knew??)

More sampling for post-excavation analyses

The wall of the inner enclosure through the rubble in Trench G

Look at that rubble and collapse... very sexy!!

Veronika, Alistair and Ian very happy to reach bedrock through the rubble and clay!!

Dream Team's hole through the core of the wall (check out the drips and stains of vitrification in the top right of the section - magic!!!)

Another fantastic picture of the Dream Team (others had to be censored!!!)

Finished returfing Trench G on the last day - look at the beautiful sunshine!

An amazing but exhausted team at the end of backfilling!!! - Thank you all