Note
Date 8 November 2015 - 18 May 2016
Event ID 1044990
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Note
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1044990
This fort is situated on the broad summit of Dunsapie overlooking Dunsapie Loch, a location girt with cliffs and rocky escarpments around three sides and easily accessible only from the sloping E flank. Irregular on plan, the fort appears to have been roughly tailored to the margins of the summit area, measuring internally about 135m in length and contracting from about 65m transversely at the N end to 35m at the S end, but the rampart itself has been very heavily robbed and is difficult to follow. At one point on the NW a row of four stones that may belong to the inner face can be seen, but elsewhere no more than wall core is visible, on the W forming a low scarp and petering out at the S end to reappear and on the E as a bank 4m thick by 1m high; a marked re-entrant in its E side, however, suggests that the perimeter may not be all of a piece, and has perhaps been extended southwards from an original enclosure on the northern and higher end. If so the interior on the S, which gives the impression that it is divided into two courts, is perhaps the remains of a late Iron Age settlement overlying the fort, rather than the fort itself. The only evidence of an entrance is on the NE into the upper end of the fort and is obscured by a later field-bank which mounts the slope obliquely to terminate on the edge of the cliff on the N. Traces of an outer rampart can be seen on the W, while on the E there has possibly been an annexe, though the greater part of it is defined by natural features and the lower end is probably partly, if not wholly, formed as a lynchet on the slope. An oval late Iron Age settlement enclosure is scooped into the slope at the lower end of this supposed annexe, and though the relationship between them is unclear its entrance opens through a break in this lynchet. Any connection between the features interpreted as the annexe and the fort is tenuous at best, and they are probably better considered in the context of a succession of land-use systems exploiting this slope rather than as a subsidiary enclosure of the fort. Finds from the area of the fort include a stone mould and a hoard of three Early Bronze Age flat axes.
Information from An Atlas of Hillforts of Great Britain and Ireland – 18 May 2016. Atlas of Hillforts SC3716
