Excavation

Date 1 April 2021 - 31 March 2022

Event ID 1158795

Category Recording

Type Excavation

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1158795

NJ 4845 2930 In 2021 and 2022 a programme of excavation at Tap o’ Noth aimed to build on previous results at Tap o’ Noth that showed the lower fort dated to the 1st millennium AD and that hundreds of contemporary house platforms survived inside. Fifteen house platforms were identified as a new Scheduled Monument consented project that aimed to increase the sample size of house platforms for dating and characterisation. Over around four seasons of excavation at Tap o’ Noth in 2021 and 2022 eleven house platforms were excavated in six trenches. The trenches were designed to sample two platforms at once in trenches designated T11, 12, 13, 15, and 17 while trench 16 revealed the entirety of two platforms. The results were consistent in all trenches – each excavation identified house platforms with up to four house floors in some cases, multiple hearths on many platforms and all platforms produced artefacts ranging from imported Roman pottery, Late Roman Amphora sherds, and hand- made locally produced pottery to glass beads and iron objects. The excavations show that the Lidar mapping and photogrammetry results that suggested more than 800 house platforms on the hill are likely to be accurate. Samples were taken for dating from the hearths and floor layers and a small number of platforms were selected for phytolith sampling for assessing activities within the structures.

Archive: University of Aberdeen and NRHE

Funder: University of Aberdeen

Gordon Noble; James O’Driscoll and Edouard Masson- Maclean – University of Aberdeen

(Source DES Volume 23)