RCAHMS Afforestable Land Survey, Braes of Doune
Date April 1992 - July 1992
Event ID 1046114
Category Project
Type Project
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1046114
In this survey, conducted between April and July 1992, the Royal Commission examined part of southern Perthshire, an area largely by-passed by archaeologists in recent decades. The survey provided an opportunity to test whether the low numbers of known monuments was anything other than a reflection of this lack of fieldwork. The quantity and range of the monuments which emerged during the survey far exceeded expectations, with implications for our understanding of settlement distribution at several points in prehistory and history.
The Braes of Doune lie on the north side of the valley of the River Teith, extending eastwards from Callander towards Dunblane and Strathallan; the present survey comprised an east-west transect measuring 15km by 5km and covering an area of 75 sq. km (Fig. 2).
The underlying geology consists chiefly of sedimentary rocks of the Lower Devonian, the erosion of which has resulted in the present gently-sloping landscape, the ground rising from the valley floor at about 50m OD towards the peaks of Uamh Bheag and Beinn Odhar at over 600m OD. The lower ground presents a landscape of improved pasture land and some arable, with rough pasture above this, giving way to heather-covered peat moorland, which predominates above about 250m. The survey area cut across these three zones of land-use, including areas of improved ground in the south-west and south-east, and deep peat (depths of up to 3m were noted in the cuttings of some of the numerous burns) towards the north. About 11 sq. km of the survey area had been afforested before the survey, while forestry applications had in recent years prompted archaeological fieldwork immediately to the south and to the south-west (McKeague and Sangster 1990; Hamilton 1991). The timeliness of the RCAHMS fieldwork was demonstrated when a further application in respect of land within the survey area was lodged with the Forestry Commission in the summer of 1992.
There had been little systematic archaeological fieldwork in the area prior to the survey. The former Archaeology Division of the Ordnance Survey visited known sites in the late 1960's, but the only prospection for new sites was that carried out from the air by RCAHMS, during which a series of crop mark enclosures was identified in the Teith valley (Maxwell 1983), two of which are situated within the survey area. Otherwise, the archaeological record consisted of a burial cairn, a group of shieling-huts, a possible standing stone, the possible remains of a chapel and a castle, records of two cist burials and a number of stray finds. Nevertheless, the area appeared to be one of some potential, particularly after the earlier pre-afforestation surveys mentioned above, and also the recognition by the Regional Archaeologist, Mrs Lorna Main, of a Neolithic long cairn at Auchenlaich, on the eastern edge of Callander, in 1991 (DES 1991, 9).
All areas of unimproved ground were walked, and all improved fields were visited. Recorded sites were plotted at 1:10,000 scale, using either EDM equipment or, where there was sufficient local control, more traditional methods with an optical square and a tape measure. Measurements of each structure were entered into a database, using Husky Hunter field computers. Summary descriptions of each site or group of sites, based on the information in the database, have been accessed into the National Monuments Record of Scotland, which also holds a copy of the survey database, as well as overlays to the 1:10,000 mapsheets on which each recorded structure is depicted and numbered. A list of all sites passed to the NMRS is included in the Gazetteer at the end of this report.
RCAHMS 1994
Project Code: BOD
Area: 75 sq. km
Structures Database: MS 731/3 and DX 001428
Linework: no digital data, EDM data plotted on 3 x 1:10,000 overlays (SC 2193555, SC 2193560 - 1)
