Note
Date 10 July 2014 - 23 May 2016
Event ID 1044727
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Note
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1044727
This fort occupies encloses the rocky hillock known as Little Dunagoil, comprising an irregular enclosure following the lip of the hillock at its WSW end, with what appears to be an added annexe taking in the ENE end in similar fashion. The interior of the main enclosure measures about 42m from ENE to WSW by 30m transversely (0.07ha), its perimeter made up of stony scarps and outcrops; excavations during 1956-61 (Marshall 1964) included two trenches across the perimeter, on the NW and SE respectively, but revealed little evidence for the structure of the rampart in these scarps, and though the turf was also stripped from its crest along the S flank, the excavators did not recognise what RCAHMS investigators identified in 2010 as the butted junction of the annexe rampart onto the main fort. The entrance seems to have been on the E, opening into what became the annexe, which measures internally about 48m from ENE to WSW by a maximum of 19m transversely (0.05ha) at the ENE end. There are also traces of walling around a lower terrace on the N. The excavations included two areas within the fort, and a third at the ENE end of the annexe, this latter proving featureless. Evidence of occupation was recovered in the other two, but no coherent structural remains. Finds include: part of a shale ring and 40 sherds of pottery from the rear of the rampart on the SE; a fragment of a comb and five sherds of 'grass-tempered' pottery and unstratified fragments of a mould for a Late Bronze Age axe (Schmidt and Burgess 1981, 246, no.1642) from the W sector of the interior; and a pendant and armlet fragment of shale, a serpentine ring, and a whorl, an awl, a pin and a knife handle of bone from the northern sector. The excavations also included two rectangular buildings on a lower terrace to the ENE, from which a wide range of medieval and earlier finds were recovered, including a large assemblage of shale working debris and fragments of finished items, and two heavily worn sherds of Samian ware. There is also a mould for a knobbed spear-butt from the site (Laing and Laing 1986, 214).
Information from An Atlas of Hillforts of Great Britain and Ireland – 23 May 2016. Atlas of Hillforts SC1180
