Note
Date 21 May 2015 - 15 August 2016
Event ID 1044560
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Note
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1044560
Little is visible of the fort that stood on the summit of Dundee Law, which was adapted in the 16th or 17th centuries for a rectangular artillery fortification, and further demolished in 1923 for the construction of a war memorial; other damage has been caused by telecommunication installations erected over the N end. Nevertheless, the first town plans surveyed for Dundee in the mid 19th century clearly depict the artillery fortification, with bastions at each of its four corners, set squarely across a subrectangular enclosure measuring in the order of 70m from N to S by 30m transversely within its rampart (0.18ha). Vitrified stones found during the construction of the war memorial and in an excavation in 1993 suggest that this earlier rampart was timber-laced, though the rampart itself was not located in 1993, when partial sections were cut across what are probably elements of the earthwork defences of the artillery fort (Driscoll 1995). An area of intense burning was located on the W side of the interior, however, returning a radiocarbon date of 770 to 370 cal BC, while a stratified sequence of deposits was also recorded in which a pit containing three sherds of 1st century AD samian ware had been cut through an earlier area of paving and sealed by another burnt deposit, in this case dating from 40 cal BC to cal AD 220. A similar spectrum was returned by three dates from internal deposits located in an earlier evaluation carried out in 1990 (Rideout 1990). The only other feature of note is that the early OS maps of Dundee Law show a scarp encircling the foot of the hill, but there is no evidence that this is an ancient enclosure and fieldwork in 1993 found only old field banks on the lower slopes (Driscoll 1995).
Information from An Atlas of Hillforts of Great Britain and Ireland – 15 August 2016. Atlas of Hillforts SC3068
