Archaeology Notes

Event ID 722771

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/722771

NT77NW 16 NT 70111 77388

(NT 7010 7740) The crop-marks of a multivallate enclosure on an unnamed hill at Broxmouth were first recognised by Dr St Joseph in 1956. Further aerial photographs have been taken by John Dewar in 1972, by Fairey Surveys Ltd in 1974, and by the RCAHMS in 1976-8.

The site, on a low eminence, 25m OD, was excavated by P Hill (for IAM) in 1977-8; he uncovered a hillfort of considerable complexity. It was preceded by an apparently unenclosed homestead, consisting of a large circular timber house. The hillfort was originally univallate with two opposing entrances, but subsequently its design underwent four major, and several minor phases of modification during which the fort became alternately bivallate and univallate and its entrances rebuilt in different ways. Almost the entire interior of the hillfort was excavated, revealing five houses of ring-groove type up to 11m in diameter, but ploughing must have destroyed others. Three scooped stone- built houses, which had clearly been occupied over a considerable period of time, represented post-fort occupation. Deposits of ox skulls at the base of the wall of one of these houses may be connected with ritual dedications.

A cemetery of nine inhumation graves lay immediately beyond the outermost ditch of the fort, and another four burials were found within the fort. The form of the graves varied, but most were lined and covered with stone slabs, aligned NNE-SSW, and they contained loosely flexed burials; the majority of the skeletons represent men and women who died in their early twenties.

It is considered likely that the site saw sporadic use from about 2000 BC and was settled for much of the 1st millenium BC and the first two centuries of the AD period.

Evidence for the use of the site in the neolithic period comes from two flint scatters on the flanks of the hill, and a sherd of late neolithic pottery found in a small pit in the cemetery area. Hill considers it likely that the cemetery and most of the interior burials might predate any structural remains on the hill and thus belong to this period. (Perhaps significantly, one of the burials was placed in a deep circular pit, a type of grave that has also been found, though containing crouched inhumations, radiocarbon dated to 2210 +/- 70 bp, at the nearby palisaded enclosure at Dryburn Bridge - see NT77NW 18).

Among the many finds from the site, noted by Hill, was a hoard of Samian ware sherds and broken glass bangles (of Kilbride-Jones' types 2 and 3).

P Hill 1978; J N G Ritchie and A Ritchie 1981.

The multivallate hillfort lies on a low eminence, one and a half miles SE of Dunbar. As the site was to be totally destroyed, excavation of the interior and E and SW entrances was undertaken.

The interior contained (at time of publication) eleven well-preserved remains of stone and timber built roundhouses, as well as pits, postholes and stakeholes. House types included ring-groove, ring-ditch, double ring-groove and stone revetted platform houses. Substantial quantities of sandstone and limestone flags had been manuported to the site from cliffs half a mile to the SW. The houses varied from 8-14m in diameter.

There were three defensive phases: a palisade enclosing .25ha on the crown of the hill; a univallate defence with a single entrance enclosing .65ha; and a multivallate defence with entrances in the E and SW extending over 2ha. The inner univallate phase ditch was backfilled in prehistory and is overlain by a flagged floor. The ditches are between 1.8 and 3.2m deep and from 3 to 8m wide. The SW entrance contains a well-constructed stone gateway through the outer defences.

Large amounts of shell, bone, and slag, small amounts of native pottery and worked bone, stone and bronze have been recovered.

Sponsor : SDD-AM

P Hill (Dunbar Archaeological Committee)

P Hill