Publication Account

Date 1963

Event ID 1015454

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Publication Account

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1015454

Traprain Law bulks 'like a harpooned whale' on the East Lothian coastal plain to the N of the Lammermuir massif. It rises 500 ft from the ground below, the N, E and S flanks falling steeply, but only the latter at all precipitously, and the W face sloping gently enough to have accommodated a great many timber-framed buildings. The sequence of pre- and proto-historic events that must have taken place on this conspicuous and majestic landmark was first revealed after a party of workmen had been employed to dig up a considerable area of the principal terrace on the W slope, during the first quarter of the present century. The relics thus obtained included the spectacular hoard of Roman silver (NT57SE 1.18) that has been published seperately, together with a great mass of native material which indicates that the hill was in occupation for a period of about 1000 years from the middle of the first millennium BC.

During this time several sets of defensive works succeeded each other to enclose different amounts of the surface of the hill. No remains of the earliest are apparent, but it can be safely assumed that one or more palisaded enclosures were formed on the W slope and on the summitt before the first ramparts and walls appeared. The length of the occupation has had the effect of blurring and obscuring the earlier versions of these more substantial works, but it is possible to follow part of what may have been the first of them, a scarp strewn with occasional grass-covered stones and boulders which borders the summit area on the N. This would have enclosed an area of about ten acres, comparable to the so-called minor oppida of Tweeddale, among them the earliest phase of Eildon Hill North (NT53SE 57).

It is suggested that the next structural development took in a further ten acres of the gentle slope immediately N of the enclosure just described; this can be traced by the rather tenuous ruins of a rampart bordering the true summit to the W and NW, and by extensions of the same nature which run along the brink of the descent to the N.

The third major reconstruction is deemed to have taken in the terraces and slopes on the W face of the hill, enlarging the enclosed area to 30 acres and so producing the second largest hillfort or oppidum in Scotland, indeed in the whole of North Britain, except Stanwick in the North Riding of Yorkshire. Yet another enlargement followed, in which the N face of the hill was also incorporated and the size of the oppidum reached 40 acres, comparable to the Eildon Hill oppidum at its largest.

The 40-acre capital of the Votadini must have been a veritable town, containing numerous inhabitants employed upon industries such as metal-working, as well as on agriculture, stock-breeding and trading with the South, probably by the east coast sea route. It has been inferred that the Votadini were in treaty with the Romans, for as far as can be seen at the present time, the successive later reconstructions took place after Pictish, rather than Roman, destructive expeditions. The 40-acre wall or rampart may have been built in the first century AD, shortly before the local arrival of the Romans in the 80's, and it may have been reconstructed at least twice, after such events as the Pictish raids of 197 and 297.

The final form of the oppidum is represented by the most impressive remains on the hill today. A stone-faced, turf-cored wall (3500 ft in length and 12 ft in thickness) was laid out to relinquish the N face of the hill, and so to reduce the area enclosed to 30 acres again. As this wall overlies almost all the other ramparts at one place or another, it is naturally the first object to strike the eye of the visitor, and parts of it are in a good enough state of preservation to reward examination. It has been suggested that the town defended by the last wall began in locally sub-Roman times, in the last half of the fourth century AD, and that it lasted perhaps until the Saxons came.

The long and virtually continuous occupation of the oppidum on Traprain Law, its degree of sophistication when compared to the bucolic settlements all about, and its more than local standing make it by far the most important place in the late prehistory and early proto-history of Scotland, and of a wider area including NE England, while by reason of the supposed accommodation the Votadini had made with the Romans, it has a unique place as a 'free' British town in Roman times. The only other oppidum of comparable size, that on Eildon Hill North, appears to have been deserted during the Roman period and never to have been used again, and the same probably applies to all the few other oppida that have been recorded in the north. There can be no doubt that here, if nowhere else in North Britain, excavations on a generous scale carried out over a considerable period would be vastly rewarding, with reference to a thousand most interesting and formative years.

R W Feachem 1963.