Note
Date 20 August 2014 - 18 October 2016
Event ID 1044812
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Note
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1044812
The site of this fort, which occupied a gravel promontory formed between gullies draining into a burn that cuts through the escarpment of an ancient shoreline a little way to the N, has been subsumed into the housing estates on the eastern fringe of Bannockburn. First recorded as a promontory fort, with five ditches cutting across the neck of the promontory (RCAHMS 1963, 420, no.493), it was subject to a trial excavation in 1974 by the Stirling Field Archaeological Society, and in advance of the housing development a more extensive investigation by the Central Excavation Unit of the Scottish Development Department in 1982, 1984 and 1985 (Rideout 1996). This revealed a complex palimpsest of ditches and palisades, though it did not prove possible to elucidate the complete sequence and dates of their construction. The smallest area enclosed by a ditched defence measured little more than 35m in diameter (0.09ha) at the tip of the promontory, but if the outermost ditch on the S represented the sole defences of the fort at one stage of its development, it would have cut off an area measuring about 80m from N to S by up to 40m transversely (0.3ha). The maximum and minimum areas enclosed thus range from only 0.09ha to 0.3ha, and the complexity of the ditches indicates that there may have been a series of enclosures of different sizes between these extremes; apart from through the innermost ditches, there was consistently an entrance on the SSE, extending along the eastern margin of the promontory, but, surprisingly, machine-cut trenches on the N, E and W also revealed a complex history of scarping and defensive works around the flanks of the promontory. A substantial timber round-house was uncovered at the centre of the interior, from which there is a single radiocarbon date from a post-hole of 770-400 cal BC, and a second from a pit that cut it of 410 to 170 cal BC. An early medieval glass bead was also recovered from the interior, other finds including coarse pottery, two saddle querns and a shale ring.
Information from An Atlas of Hillforts of Great Britain and Ireland – 18 October 2016. Atlas of Hillforts SC1594
