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Date 3 June 2015 - 25 October 2016

Event ID 1044589

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Note

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1044589

The remains of this small fortification are situated on the coastal cliffs SSE of West Mains of Ethie. First discovered during the RCAHMS Survey of Marginal Lands, and excavated by the Abertay Historical Society 1962-71 (Wilson 1980), its defences comprise three ramparts with external ditches, which bar access from the W to an irregular area measuring a maximum of 53m from E to W by 24m transversely (0.1ha). The defences are drawn in a shallow arc across the neck on the WNW, forming a belt about 33m deep, and are pierced by a central entrance. The description of what was found in the areas excavated is confusing, but showed that where best preserved the innermost rampart is about 2.4m in thickness, and is faced inside and out with large boulders. Evidence of timberwork was also found beneath it, however, comprising two parallel lengths of palisade trench, the inner rather slighter than the outer, and several post-holes; a penannular brooch was recovered from the bottom of the outer trench. For the most part the outer ramparts were little more than ridges of undisturbed clay separated by ditches between 2.4m and 3.6m in breadth and from 1.5m to 1.8m in depth. The entrance causeway had two layers of metalling, and a glass bead and a fragment of a blue glass bangle were recovered from between them. The entrance through the inner rampart was paved and there were also patches of paving and a scatter of pits and post-holes in the interior almost certainly representing several periods of construction; two hearths were found immediately behind the rampart. The post-holes cannot be resolved into any clear pattern, but a shallow depression 5m in diameter identified on the S on the RCAHMS survey seems to have been a clay-floored structure with an enclosing bank. Other finds from the excavations include two stone lamps, a decorated stone, an iron sickle, a fragment of crucible, a bronze fibula, a sherd of samian ware and several coarse stone tools and fragments of rotary querns. The glass bead, bangle, the sherd of smaian and the fibula and brooch all date from the 1st and 2nd centuries AD.

Information from An Atlas of Hillforts of Great Britain and Ireland – 25 October 2016. Atlas of Hillforts SC3093

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