Pricing Change
New pricing for orders of material from this site will come into place shortly. Charges for supply of digital images, digitisation on demand, prints and licensing will be altered.
Field Visit
Date 17 February 1993
Event ID 546036
Category Recording
Type Field Visit
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/546036
(Location re-cited as NY 3086 8418). The well preserved remains of a multi-period settlement of timber round-houses, comprising both unenclosed and palisaded phases, are situated on the summit of Gibb's Hill, a SE-facing spur on the W side of the valley of the Logan Water. The palisaded settlement has been of at least five phases, the two earliest of which are the least well preserved. The larger of the earlier phases is represented by a single palisade trench on the SW and by two low scarps on the NE, and measures about 60m from N to S by 50m transversely. Of the other, only an arc of palisade trench on its NW side is visible where short fragments of it cross the interior of what was to become the latest enclosure. The two early phases were succeeded by a pair of palisade trenches, set from 1.5m to 3m apart, enclosing an roughly oval area measuring about 56m by 44m. This in turn was succeeded by a smaller enclosure, measuring 45.5m by 31m within a pair of palisade trenches set 1m to 2m apart. The final phase of enclosure saw the reduction in size of this enclosure to about 45.5m by 29m, by re-siting the inner palisade trench along the line of the inner of the palisades of the preceding twin-palisaded enclosure. In its latest guise, the enclosure appears to have consisted of a single palisade. All three later enclosures had entrances on the SE, and it is likely that the entrance of the larger of these enclosures re-used the entrance of the preceding phases.
On the NW, there is a bank and ditch which follows the natural edge of the summit and cuts off access from higher ground on that side. This earthwork may well be contemporary with the first-phase palisaded enclosure or, though it is less likely, any of the subsequent phases of enclosure.
In addition to the palisade trenches, the summit of the hill is liberally covered with the remains of timber round-houses. In places, clear relative chronological relationships can be demonstrated not only between the various phases of palisade trenches and the round-houses, but between the different phases of round-houses. On the W, a round-house, one of four which lie just off the summit, can be seen to cut into the ditch of an earlier phase earthwork, piercing its low counterscarp bank in the process.
Such is the nature of relative dating by association, however, that structures can only be shown to be earlier or later than one another, and it is very difficult to prove contemporaneity between structures that are not physically linked. This, and the fragmentary nature of most of the structures on the summit of the hill, makes anything more than a crude analysis of the history of the site impossible.
Visited by RCAHMS (JRS), 17 February 1993.
