Kite photos reveal Buildings!! ?Pictish Palaces!?

Wow!

I am not directing an excavation again without a kite photographer on hand at all times - for cropmark sites this technique is invaluable!! This is an example of the kite pictures our Icelandic trench supervisor Oskar has been taking over the last week. One rectangular building is very obvious at the top of the photograph- represented by lines of posts and a end wall overlain by our measuring tapes. The larger buidling we have identified is much harder to see in this picture - a beam slot runs down the trench just below the rectangular structure, over the Iron Age ring ditch (represented by the black crescent to the right) and out of the trench. We've found beam slots at right angles to this, but have yet to find the other side of this putative massive timber structure - this will be our aim for the last week! We don't have any dates for either of these structures yet, but the beam slot overlies the Iron Age structure we dated last year to the 4th-3rd century BC and the rectangular shape of these structures and the use of squared timbers is strongly suggestive of an early medieval date. Pictish Palaces?! Watch this space.....

Back on site tomorrow after our day off. We went site visiting today, seeing the beautiful wolf stone at Leith Hall, Dunnideer hillfort, Picardy Stone and a recumbent stone circle. A trip to Inverurie for a pint (of strawberry milkshake of course) was also a necessity.

Keep blog watching!!

Gordon.