Excavation
Date 1986
Event ID 1102879
Category Recording
Type Excavation
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1102879
The site is approached by means of a causeway around 20m long leading out from the W shore of the loch. The dun measures overall approximately 10m SE-NW and 11.5m NE-SW. Its inner and outer walls are on average a metre thick, with a gallery space between of similar width. Removal of surface rubble in 1985 and 1986 very rapidly established the existence of three principal galleries, and a fourth cell adjacent to the dun entrance. The main entrance was over a metre wide at its outer end widening to approximately 1.4m immediately behind the door rebates. A pivot stone indicated the position of the swinging door itself, and two bar holes were contained within the flanking walls on either side. The floor of the entrance was paved, providing a link between the internal stratigraphic sequence and the external paving of the annexe.
The area so far exposed in the interior has produced relatively few internal fittings or furnishings. The centre of the dun, at any rate in its later phases of occupation, was dominated by a hearth of baked clay, defined by edge-set stones, and based upon a raft of hard green clay.
An additional setting of stones just offset from the centre of the dun is also secondary, but there is some evidence that earlier hearths may lie below these features.
One noteworthy feature of the secondary occupation was the discovery around the NW side of the central hearth of an arc of animal teeth, disarticulated from any trace of jaw bones, and disposed individually in a line, or double line for a distance of 60cms to 70cms within the excavated area.
Directly outwith the entrance to the dun a cutting 2m wide down to the water's edge exposed structural evidence for the use of the Annexe. A short length of cross wall, 1.0m thick and 1.20m from the dun wall, evidently provided protective cover for the dun entrance. Beyond the cross wall, by the water margin, a hearth like feature was defined by a series of edge set stones, while stone facing in the edge of the trench suggested a concentration of structures in the Annexe.
The benefits of the underwater excavation in the surrounding loch has been immediately evident from the volume of material recovered from a relatively small area, and from the fact that this material complemented rather than supplemented the finds from the land based excavation. Animal bone, barely recoverable from the interior, is preserved in quantity underwater, while shells, which were equally scarce within the dun, occur frequently in the underwater deposits. The 1986 excavation also exposed a length of walling, five courses high, and not obviously displaced, the footings of which sit nearly a metre below present water level.
Several decorative features within the pottery assemblage can be paralleled elsewhere, notably applied cordons, ring bosses, averted rims and incised linear decoration, but definition within the typology is not well established.
D W Harding, P G Topping and T N Dixon 1986
