Well it is time to pack up today and go home. Thankfully the sun is at last shining to see us off. We had a great day yesterday with more mould fragments (probably for making pins) in the burnt deposits in the outer ditch. We are also beginning to make sense of the sequence. It looks like the fort starts with the inner ditch and perhaps a small timber structure inside. The fort then gets enlarged - the inner ditch is filled in and the outer ditch dug on a similar groundplan. This is further elaborated with an external palisade and post setting and a very elaborate timber entrance-way to the enclosures with the Craw Stane perhaps standing at this entrance. Inside the earlier timber structure is replaced by a massive plank and post built building. Well that is our proposed sequence which will stand until the radiocarbon dates show how wrong (or perhaps how right - less likely granted) we are!
We are rushing back onto site this morning to do some last minute section drawing and record keeping. Meanwhile a courageous band of students will be cleaning the houses and tidying away all the beer cans lying around.....
We are working on our site plan and reports and hope to post more in the coming weeks and months. Stay tuned!!
Dr G signing off for now!
Rhynie, Aberdeenshire
The Craw Stane with Tap o'Noth hillfort in the background (Photo courtesy of Cathy MacIver).
Hi Folks,
ReplyDeleteI just found this site. I'm a fascinated amateur on the subject of the Picts - well I did play in the ruins of Dun Telve and Dun Trodden as a child - do you have any spaces for amateur archaeologists with a forensic science background next year? (SOCO with Met and Beds Police) I live in the US - Maine - but I'd gladly donate a couple of week's work in summer to your project if you like.
Best regards,
Tom Campbell.
Dear Tom,
DeleteMany thanks for your email. Very nice to get an email from Maine was well! (Maine is my home state!)
We may have space for volunteers on future digging seasons, but all depends very much on how our applications for grants to support the project go in the next few months.
If you keep your eye on the blog, you should get a sense of when we are next ready to pick up the trowels with serious intent. If you email us closer to the next field season, we should be able to give you a better idea of when we will be on site and if we have enough space to take on volunteers. We normally have a few local volunteers working with us every day, and I don't see why if you wanted to travel across, we could not accommodate a non-local volunteer. I should warn you that all volunteers would need to sort our their own accommodation and travel, however, as our students tend to take all the spaces we have in the dig accommodation and vehicles.