Experts believe they have discovered another Iron Age power centre in Moray (Grampian, Scotland). National Museums of Scotland curator Dr Fraser Hunter said investigations at a field at Burghead have possibly revealed 'a high-status site'. The archaeologist said the remains of four Iron Age roundhouses could lie buried beneath the soil. He said: "In combination with the finds that have been discovered at the site, it suggests that this is one of the more important areas, one of the power centres of the Burghead area." The exact location of the site at Burghead is being kept secret while further investigations are carried out.
Exciting discoveries unearthed at the field in recent years prompted a team of Glasgow University experts to carry out a study of several acres of land. A hoard of Roman coins and brooches, Bronze Age gold-plated ring money, a shield stud and a gold ring are among the relics found at the location in recent years. The three-day National Museums of Scotland-sponsored study investigated the internal structure of the field using a technique called geophysical surveying.
Mr Hunter said: "There's evidence that we have got a settlement of roundhouses there, which was what we were hoping for. We can never know entirely with geophysics, so the idea would be to test this and get some funding. We need to discuss it with various people and the landowner but the ideal next move would be to start excavating. It looks very promising."
Another Iron Age power centre 13 miles south at Birnie, near Elgin, has, over the last 12 years, uncovered a vast array of relics. Mr Hunter went on to say that the works at the Burghead field would be small-scale by comparison, however. "There is no way that we could do anything on the same scale as what we have done at Birnie. We have been digging there for 12 years," he said.
Source: The Press and Journal (6 March 2010)
Thirteen projects look set to receive money from Orkney Islands Council's fund for archaeological investigations in 2010. Members of the OIC development committee have backed recommendations to award funding to the projects selected by a panel made up of the OIC manager of museums and heritage, the county archaeologist and the Orkney Museum's curator of archaeology.
Set to receive the highest amount is the ongoing excavation on the Ness of Brodgar, which is described in the report as having huge tourism potential and exciting archaeology. Led by Nick Card, of the Orkney Research Centre for Archaeology (ORCA), the project has been allocated £8,000. Other ORCA projects were also successful in attracting funding, including the Brae of Habreck, in Wyre.
The Hoy and South Walls Landscape Interpretation work has been approved for £4,662 in funding. This project is a continuation of another scheme that has so far 'hugely changed the interpretation of an area of Hoy', including a mound, previously thought to be a broch, which turned out to be a Neolithic chambered cairn. Expected to receive £1,500 is Oxford University's Birsay-Skaill Landscape Archaeology Project, which, councillors heard, "should deliver interesting results". Due to its "huge media potential", the "Wrapping places: interpreting the Ring of Bookan complex" project has been approved for £2,500 from the fund. The investigation is led by Dr Colin Richards of the University of Manchester.
Three geophysics projects, led by Dr Susan Ovenden, of Orkney College, look likely to receive £1,000 each. These include ongoing geophysics work in the World Heritage Area Inner Buffer Zone, which completes a long running programme of magnetometry, and the Skaill Loch Environs Project. Dr Ovenden's third successful project is the World Heritage Area LiDAR Zone, which is approved for funding because it enables Orkney to contribute to the national 'Scotland's 10' programme.
Source: Orkneyjar (4 February 2010)
A hoard of Iron Age jewellery found by a treasure hunter in Stirlingshire (Scotland) has gone on display in Edinburgh. The four solid gold neck ornaments, or torcs, could be more than 2,000 years old. They were found in a field by safari park manager David Booth, who was using a metal detector for the first time. They are now owned by the Crown and have been placed on public view at the National Museum of Scotland for the next three weeks. Fraser Hunter, the museum's curator, said "These four gold torcs are very beautiful, very displayable objects. They have many stories to tell."
Further excavations have been carried out in the field where the find was made. No further gold has been discovered but archaeologists have found a timber-frame building, and they believe the site could have been some kind of shrine. Mr Hunter said: "The torcs may have been an offering to an unknown god. This is not a normal domestic site."
Meanwhile, the future of the gold has yet to be decided. It is currently under the care of the Treasure Trove Unit, which has lent it to the museum so the public can get an idea what the find is like. David Caldwell of the unit said, after the display the next step would be to have the items properly valued.
The museum which is allocated the gold will then have to pay that amount for the collection. It is not clear yet how much the man who made the find will get. At the time of the discovery David Booth said he knew it was old, but did not recognise the importance of his find. Finders have no ownership rights and must report any objects to the Treasure Trove Unit, but they may receive a reward equal to the value.
The gold will be on public view until 10 February.
Sources: BBC News, The Herald Scotland (20 January 2010)
Archaeologists have made what they described as a 'chance discovery' of a stone arrowhead in the garden of a ruined schoolhouse in Sutherland (Scotland). Glasgow University Archaeological Research Division (Guard) said it may have been dropped by a hunter. It added that it may have arrived from elsewhere and then been lost by a local collector or a teacher at the former parish school in Durness. The 3cm relic was made from a sedimentary rock called black chert.
In a report by Guard made available on Highland Council's Highland Historic Environment Record, archaeologists said the find had 'cast an unexpected light' on the area's prehistoric times. The spot on rocky ground between two lochs was a perfect place to stalk game, they said. But the archaeologists added that it could have been lost from a private collection after being found somewhere else locally.
Source: BBC News (16 Jabuary 2010)
A seventh grave has been discovered at a prehistoric burial ground being excavated on Skye (Inner Hebrides, Scotland). The discovery was made by a team of archeologists working close to Armadale pier on the Sleat peninsula.
Six slab-lined graves and numerous cremation pits were previously unearthed on the house-building plot in October. Excavations began on a second area of the site this month after the removal of overhead power lines. The latest discovery is believed to be older than pevious graves and could date from the early Bronze Age, more than 4,000 years ago.
The grave contained well-preserved flint arrow heads and knives, which were most likely buried with a person of high status in the community. Archaeologist Mary Peteranna said: "One of the exciting things about this burial was that it turned up below a layer of gravel which appeared to have been naturally shifted at some point in prehistory. It suggested to us that this grave could be earlier than other burials on the site. Even more amazing, the cist contained a single burial with five flint artefacts in perfect condition. Three flint arrowheads and two flint knives were placed with the body at the time of burial. Flint tools of such high quality are a rare occurrence on Skye and these suggest that this was a person of very high status."
Much of the burial site is on a raised shingle beach overlooking the Sound of Sleat, meaning it would have been observed by sea travellers. The Bronze Age and possibly Neolithic discoveries made in October are being stored at museums in Armadale and Inverness. The discoveries have not disrupted building work on the site, where UBC Group is erecting homes on behalf of Lochalsh and Skye Housing Association.
Source: The Press And Journal (25 December 2009)
A unique discovery of submerged man-made structures on the seabed off Orkney (Scotland) could help find solutions to rising sea levels, experts have said. They said the well preserved stone pieces near the island of Damsay are the only such examples around the UK. It is thought some of the structures may date back thousands of years.
Geomorphologist Sue Dawson said that people have survived and adapted in the past and it is that adaption to climate change that needs to be learned from. Archaeologist Caroline Wickham-Jones, of the University of Aberdeen, said of their freezing investigations under the December seas off Orkney: "We have certainly got a lot of stonework. There are some quite interesting things. You can see voids or entrances. There's this one feature that is like a stone table - you've got a large slab about a metre and a half long and it's sitting up on four pillars or walls so the next thing we need to do is to get plans and more photographs to try and assess and look for patterns. The quality and condition of some of the stonework is remarkable. Nothing like this has ever been found on the seabed around the UK.
Geophysicist Richard Bates, from the Scottish Oceans Institute, said: "We've got other sites down on the south coast of England where we have got submerged landscapes, Meso-Neolithic landscapes as we have here but what we haven't got anywhere else is actual structures."
Sue Dawson, a geomorphologist from the University of Dundee, has been studying how and why the coast line is constantly changing. She said: "One of the key premises behind a lot of the study of the past is that the past is a key to the present and the future. So we can look to times when maybe environmental changes have been much more rapid and much more catastrophic in some instances and people have survived and adapted and it's that adaption to climate change is one of the key things that we need to get to grips with."
The experts said the seabed around Orkney may be littered with man-made structures. Richard Bates added: "Pretty much anywhere in Orkney you can see a vista which has part of man within it, ancient man in the environment. The similar case is going to be in this drowned landscape so the few places we have seen so far are the biggest features but we expect to see much more as we dissect that landscape in finer and finer detail."
Source: BBC News (17 December 2009)
Proof that prehistoric people placed bunches of flowers in the grave when they buried their dead has been found for the first time, experts have said. Archaeologists have discovered a bunch of meadowsweet blossoms in a Bronze Age grave at Forteviot, south of Perth (Scotland).
Pollen found in earlier digs had been thought to have come from honey, or the alcoholic drink mead but this find may finally rule that theory out. Dr Kenneth Brophy, from the University of Glasgow, said the flowers "don't look very much. Just about three or four millimetres across. But these are the first proof that people in the Bronze Age were actually placing flowers in with burials." The dark brown heads were found, along with a clump of organic material which archaeologists now say is the stems of the flowers. The bunch had been placed by the head of the high-status individual known to have been buried in the grave.
Diggers also found pieces from a birch bark coffin in the grave, and a bronze dagger with a gold hilt band. "In burials we're used to finding metalwork", Dr Brophy explained. "But to find these very human touches is something very rare, if not unique. It brings it home to you that what you're looking at is not just a series of abstract remains, but actually these are people that you're dealing with."
The finds all come from a bronze age grave - or cist - excavated by the Universities of Aberdeen and Glasgow. The site was marked by an avenue of oak posts, and large earthworks. More digs are planned in the area next year, when archaeologists will try to confirm if a sandstone slab found nearby was part of a stone circle.
An ancient rubbish tip - inhabited nearly 2,000 years ago - is disappearing into the Scottish sea, archeologists have warned. The Iron Age midden on Skye's west coast has so far yielded bone fragments, stone tools, a button manufactured from horn and the top of a human skull. But experts are battling the elements in a race to save the 1,900-year-old treasure trove from the elements.
The manmade tools and fragments are already under attack from lashing waves and strong winds, with significant amounts of material already lost to the sea. A report published by Highland Council's Historic Environment Record said that at the current rate of erosion, the site will not last beyond 2010. The settlement is thought to have been inhabited from 80 CE. It was discovered by local archeologists Martin Wildgoose and Steven Birch in 2005.
Excavations last year and this year have uncovered a number of fascinating objects. Among the tools and animal bones, archeologists found the remains of a human skull with a small hole drilled into the top. Experts have speculated that the hole could have been made while the victim was still alive as a primitive form of surgery.
The rock shelter and midden, known as Uamh an Eich Bhric, or Cave of the Speckled Horse, is about 3km south-west of the village of Fiskavaig. It is extremely difficult to get to the site by land, with excavators having to negotiate a steep 100 metre descent of high grass and heather to the shore below. Access by sea is only possible in calm conditions, due to the hazardous landing on a boulder and pebble beach.
The site was uncovered when a huge talus, or pile of broken rock, that had protected the cave from the sea was partially breached during the winter storms of 2005. Since then, the tides have exposed the site and continue to wash out new material on a regular basis. When it became clear that time was against the archeologists, Historic Scotland sponsored the excavations to recover as many artefacts as possible before the site was destroyed. A spokeswoman for Historic Scotland said: "From the evidence gathered it was clear that an important and unusual site was at severe risk from continuing erosion. A campaign of excavation was quickly organised, with funding from Historic Scotland and others. The excavations have revealed that during the Iron Age, people used this location as a temporary home." Details of those who lived in the cave were yet to emerge, she said, adding that from ongoing analysis there was strong evidence of metal-working.
Sources: BBC News (10 December 2009), The Scotsman (11 December 2009)
Westertown Farm (NJ 58824450) is situated on the A97 road just south of the B9001 junction, about 8km northeast of Huntly (Aberdeenshire, Scotland). This is an area with many ancient sites, including several stone circles and cup-marked stones. The Westertown Stone is 2.2 meters in length by 1.5 meters wide with 12 plain cup marks.
Unfortunately, anybody looking for this cup marked stone will be wasting their time. The farmer buried the stone several years ago in the same field in which it had rested for years. The reason given - he couldn't be bothered driving around it. There then followed arguments between the Historic Scotland and the farmer. So in the end not a very good result.
Meanwhile at Corskellie (NJ 55864751), a magnificent cup and ring marked stone was found. The farmer here displayed the stone, along with two others, on a platform beside a new barn. Surely this would and should have been the answer at Westertown!
Source: The Heritage Journal (1 December 2009)
Scotland's foremost amateur archaeologist, Tam Ward of Biggar Archaeology Group, was guest speaker at the November meeting of Lanark and District Archaeological Society. The subject of Tam's talk was about the excavation work at Howburn Farm, near Elsrickle, which turned out to be one of the most important digs in Scotland this year.
Tam related how the site had been discovered through diligent field walking. Initially, Tam thought the site was early Neolithic but a talk with an expert in prehistory revealed the amazing fact that some of the tools that Tam and his team had discovered were about 16,000 years old (later Paleolithic). This was quite a revelation as nothing this early had ever been found in Scotland. What was also staggering was the fact that the people who came to Howburn actually walked across the area known now as the North Sea. The route would have been via the Dogger Bank which is the only bit left of the land route from Northern Europe. About 9000 years ago this route became flooded with the melting of the glaciers and the collapse of the Norwegian Trench which led to a devastating tsunami affecting Northern Europe.
Tools fashioned by the people of the palaeolithic period in Scotland were similar to those produced in Denmark, Northern Germany and Holland. They came to Scotland chasing the herds of migrating reindeer and living off their meat and utilising their hides for clothing. No reindeer remains were found was due to the high acidity of the Scottish soil.
Source: Hamilton Advertiser (19 November 2009)