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2015 RCAHMS Special Survey
1. Dunloskin Wood, Argyll
In April, at the request of Historic Scotland, RCAHMS undertook a survey to record the locations and characteristics of a group of 40 artificial platforms in Dunloskin Wood, Dunoon. First identified by the Cowal Archaeological Society in the 1960s, the platforms occupy an area of oak woodland extending some 30ha across a NE-facing slope. Circular or oval in plan, they range in size from 5.2–10m in diameter and, whilst excavation undertaken in the 1970s revealed one of them to be a stance for a Neolithic building, the majority are most probably charcoal burning platforms of 18th- or 19th-century date. Further, the pattern of their distribution strongly suggests that this is the result of a series of episodes of charcoal burning, probably based on a rotational mixed regime of pollarding, coppicing and felling.
2. Ewes Doors, Dumfries and Galloway
The opportunity was taken in November to survey the remains of the Roman watch-tower at Ewes Doors, Dumfries and Galloway, a site first recognised by the Ordnance Survey in 1962 and only recognised as a possible Roman watch-tower by RCAHMS in 1996. Situated on a natural rise, the earthwork comprises an inner enclosure measuring 5m in diameter within a bank 3m thick, and an outer enclosure about 17m in diameter within a narrow ditch and outer bank about 3.5m thick. Depressions in the turf within the inner enclosure appear to indicate the presence of a 3m square setting of four posts. There are gaps in both banks and a causeway leads across the ditch on the NNE – the direction of the Roman road some 30m downslope.
3. Eynhallow, Orkney
A walkover survey of the island in August will enable 30 Canmore entries to be enhanced by the provision of revised site descriptions and digital photographs. Lurg Moor, Greenock Following a revisit to the Roman fortlet by RCAHMS staff in 2014 and the recognition that neither the existing Canmore description nor the plan drawn in 1952 adequately represented what was actually visible on the ground, the site was re-surveyed in April. Among the features brought out by the new survey was the relationship between the fortlet and the natural topography, the presence of a counterscarp bank on the SE and SW, and the irregular character of the ditch – the result of subsidence caused by waterlogging having eroded its NE side.
4. Rousay, Orkney
In the spring a survey team spent a week on the island of Rousay, Orkney, as part of a partnership project with the University of the Highlands and Islands. This saw the mapping and recording of monuments in a predominantly early 19th-century crofting landscape at Quandale at the NW end of the island. Whilst the majority of the features recorded were associated with and reflected the complexity of a farming landscape that both expanded and contracted over time, earlier remains also survive and new discoveries include a cist, probably of Bronze Age date, lying open a short distance from one of the farmsteads.
5. Strathearn Forts, Perth and Kinross
Two forts were surveyed in Strathearn in 2015, the first on the summit of Ogle Hill, 2km SE of Auchterarder, in February, the second on ‘The Roundel’, a wooded craggy knoll 1.5km S of Perth in November. Ogle Hill was surveyed ahead of excavation by Glasgow University’s SERF project, and a number of previously unrecorded features were recorded, including the use of the hill as part of a larger 19th-century designed landscape. Survey at ‘The Roundel’, resulted from RCAHMS staff recognising (during a visit to the SERF excavation there in 2013) that previously unrecorded remains of the defences survived as upstanding features on the W side of the fort. Survey confirmed the presence of these features, but examination of the site also revealed that the whole top of the knoll, including the interior of the fort, had been extensively landscaped in the early 1960s when the house that presently occupies the summit was built.
RCAHMS (DES 2015, 192-3)
