Excavation

Date 6 July 2015 - 10 July 2015

Event ID 1026087

Category Recording

Type Excavation

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1026087

NJ 1090 6914 As part of the Northern Picts Project surveys and excavations have been undertaken in an area stretching from Aberdeenshire to Shetland targeting sites that can help contextualize the character of society in the early medieval period in northern Pictland.

From the 6–10 July 2015 a number of test trenches were excavated in the gardens belonging to the Coastguard houses of Burghead Fort – the largest Pictish fort known. The trenches aimed to evaluate the survival of intact deposits within the upper citadel of the fort, which was seriously compromised by the construction of the 19th-century town of Burghead. The majority of trenches revealed only 19th-century finds overlying natural sand deposits within the upper fort. One trench (2 x 4m) in the eastern part of the Coastguard station gardens did however reveal the remains of a timber structure with floor/midden layers overlying. Within these layers fragments of a large rotary quern were recovered. The floor/ midden layers were partially removed in a 1m wide slot

revealing a series of postholes below. Charcoal of Scots pine was recovered from the posthole and dated to 430-650 cal AD. A few metres to the N a 1 x 2m trench was excavated. This identified an animal bone midden that extended to at least 1m deep below 19th-century destruction and a layer of paving. The animal bone mainly consisted of cattle bone and within the midden a fragment of a 9th-century Anglo-Saxon coin was recovered.

Archive: University of Aberdeen

Funder: University of Aberdeen Development Trust in association with the Tarbat Discovery Centre

Gordon Noble and Oskar Sveinbjarnarson – University of Aberdeen

(Source: DES, Volume 16)