Excavation

Date April 2022

Event ID 1164086

Category Recording

Type Excavation

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1164086

NT 55450 32800 Two trenches were opened over the enclosing elements at Eildon Hill North, in April 2022, in order to recover material to comprehensively date the complex system of enclosures. Trench 1 was opened over the rampart enclosing the large upper terrace of Eildon Hill North. The excavations revealed the core of the rampart consisted of an unstructured deposit of small to medium angular stones intermixed with a greyish red clayey silt, and this sits on an old ground surface. No facing stones were identified and it is possible that turf or other non-earthfast materials could have been incorporated into the structure of the rampart. Abutting the inner side of the rampart were a series of midden deposits, one of which contained pottery and fragments of shale bracelets.

Trench 2 was opened over the outer enclosing element of the hillfort, a series of three closely spaced banks, which surround an area of over 18ha. The middle and upper rampart were identified, cleaned, and sondages excavated through each to assess the sequences of construction. The outermost rampart did not survive well here however, being visible as a flat terrace. The inner rampart wall was built on a relatively level platform that had been created by cutting into the hillslope on the upslope side. The wall appears to have been around 2.6m thick and survived to around 1.2m high. The lower deposits were contained by a possible wallface and rubble core. The lower deposits contained numerous sherds of thick-walled stone tempered hand-made pottery within. A possible second phase of hillfort construction was apparent in the inner rampart section, comprising a 1.8m wide and 0.5m high deposit of angular quarried sandstone built on top of earlier deposits.

The middle rampart was identified underneath 0.2–0.9m of

hillwash. It comprised a wall built on a relatively level platform that had been created by cutting into the hillslope on the upslope side. The wall itself was an unstructured dump of angular quarried sandstone rubble (most stones around 0.2–0.3m in max length), surviving to around 5m wide and up to 0.5m thick. No wallfaces were identified on either side, though on the western (downslope) side a layer of charcoal rich silty clay (2006) was found packed against the upper edge of the wall – perhaps part of a capping to the rampart on this side.

Archive: University of Aberdeen

Funder: Leverhulme Trust; University of Aberdeen

James O’Driscoll and Gordon Noble – University of Aberdeen

(Source: DES Volume 23)