Note
Date 7 September 2015 - 19 October 2016
Event ID 1045253
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Note
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1045253
The fort known as Hownam Rings, situated on the local summit of the NW spur of Windy Law, was the scene of excavations by Mrs C M Piggott in 1948 that played a major role in the evolution of hillfort studies in Scotland in the 1950s and 60s, giving rise to the much quoted Hownam sequence in which palisaded enclosures were successively replaced by univallate and multivallate defences, before being superseded by Roman Iron Age settlements built across derelict ramparts. The defences of Hownam Rings are best preserved on the W flank, comprising no fewer than three ramparts with shallow external ditches or quarried terraces, the outer with a counterscarp bank, but elsewhere they are evidently overlain by the remains of a later settlement dating from the Roman Iron Age or late Iron Age; the latter is made up of a series of stone founded round-houses disposed around scooped yards and, on the E, a rectilinear enclosure. On plan, at least, the greater part of this settlement lies within a walled enclosure, which gives every appearance of also overlying the defences, but was itself superseded by the rectilinear enclosure on the E. While the latter relationship is secure enough, the sequence identified in the excavations placed the walled enclosure prior to the multivallate defences, enclosing a roughly oval area measuring 90m from E to W by 75m transversely (0.5ha). While not disputing the detailed observations made in individual trenches, this sequence cannot be correct and with hindsight diverse structural components from different periods have probably been conflated to create the circuit of the supposed univallate phase. Likewise, the relationship of the two palisade trenches that are supposed to form the earliest phases of the sequence here is far from clear, Supposedly they are overlain by the ramparts of the multivallate phase, but in practice they were found only in an area where the ramparts had been ploughed down by the Roman Iron Age and their relationships to these defences is by no means secure. While these stratigraphic relationships cannot be resolved without further excavation, there is no doubting the presence of an oval multivallate fort at Hownam Rings, probably measuring internally about 90m from E to W, but no more than 60m transversely (0.45ha); there was an entrance on the SSW, probably forming part of an entrance way approaching obliquely to expose the visitor's left side. Finds from the excavations include a range of coarse stone tools and coarse pottery and an iron knife, while fragments of Roman pottery show that the late Iron Age settlement was certainly occupied into the 1st and 2nd centuries AD.
Information from An Atlas of Hillforts of Great Britain and Ireland – 19 October 2016. Atlas of Hillforts SC3401
