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Publication Account

Date 1986

Event ID 1017314

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Publication Account

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1017314

Excavation on this low coastal headland of conglomerate has revealed an extraordinarily long sequence of occupation. The defensive properties of the site are emphasised by the walk to it, along a narrow knife-edged isthmus, nowhere more than 4m wide.

The initial defence was on the Knoll, the landward point of the promontory, and consisted of at least one palisade, probably built in the early 1st millennium BC. Around the 4th century BC, the Knoll was refortified with a vertical wall of stone and timber and an elaborate gateway, similar to some German forts. Considerable evidence of metalworking as well as objects such as an imported Gennan chisel lay behind this defence. The next phase occurred sometime after 100 BC, further east (between the Knoll and the Medieval castle), and consisted of a timber-laced rampart which was destroyed by a fIerce fire. A fourth phase saw the cutting of two flat-bottomed ditches across the promontory at the junction of the Knoll and the main area.

From the objects recovered in the excavation and the defensive phases outlined above, it is possible to summarise the prehistoric occupations as a late bronze-age refuge, an iron-age citadel and an early Pictish fort. Subsequently the promontory was used for a medieval castle and for Fort Fiddes, an 18th century shore defence.

Information from ‘Exploring Scotland’s Heritage: Grampian’, (1986).

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