Note
Date 21 August 2015 - 3 April 2017
Event ID 1045127
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Note
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1045127
Eildon Hill North, the easternmost of the three summits of the Eildon Hills has long been known as the site of one of the largest fortifications in Scotland. At least two circuits of defences can be distinguished, the inner enclosing the plateau that slopes down E from the summit of the hill, and the outer contouring along a shoulder lower down the slope, but climbing up on the E to ride over the E end of the plateau. The outer, comprising three ramparts for much of the circuit, though in places they are reduced to little more than terraces and only two can be detected, encloses 15.5ha, while the inner enclosing the plateau, its perimeter little more than an intermittent terrace about 2.4m wide, takes in 3.2ha. No trace of a possible third circuit identified by RCAHMS investigators beneath the house platforms that pack the upper plateau was located when two evaluation trenches were excavated across its line in 1986 (Owen 1992). Five gaps can be seen in the outer belt, of which those on the E, ESE, SW, and WSW are probably original entrances, whereas that on the NNE is pierced obliquely by an engineered trackway and may be relatively recent. The chronology and sequence between the two schemes , however, is uncertain. An evaluation of the inner rampart of the outer belt in 1986 (Owen 1992) at the entrance on the SW uncovered a Late Bronze Age hearth beneath it, but was unable to date the rampart itself. Furthermore the ramparts below it were not excavated and their relationship to the inner rests on the assumption that the concentric belt recorded by survey is a single contemporary entity. Doubts about the wisdom of this assumption arise on the E, where the belt of ramparts climbs up to the E end of the upper plateau. Aerial photographs of this intersection taken under snow in 2010 suggest that whereas the inner rampart climbs straight over the top of the plateau perimeter, the outer ones divert around its foot. The relationship is on the one hand clear-cut, and on the other ambiguous, but at the very least implies that the inner rampart in its present form post-dates the plateau fortification, blocking an earlier entrance in the latter's E end; more tentatively, it might be contended that the outer belt of defences incorporates two separate elements with a much wider chronology. If this is the case it might go some way to explaining the very wide range of dates recovered from the excavation on the SW in 1986 of three of the numerous platforms that are visible along the lower slopes below the plateau. Two returned Late Bronze Age radiocarbon dates, while a second occupation on one of them, and on a third adjacent, were firmly dated to the Roman Iron Age. The artefact assemblages recovered in 1986 broadly reflect this same pattern, earlier items including a bronze chisel or punch and evidence of bronze metallurgy, the later two fibula, a glass bead, glass armlets iron metallurgy and Roman pottery.
Information from An Atlas of Hillforts of Great Britain and Ireland – 03 April 2017. Atlas of Hillforts SC3327
