Publication Account
Date 2007
Event ID 587548
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/587548
NO43 2 LAWS HILL (‘Laws of Monifieth’, ‘The Laws’, Drumsturdy’)
NO/491349
This probable broch in Monifieth stands on, and is apparently later than, the ruins of a much larger stone-walled fort. The site was apparently looted of stone for building for a long time before 1834 before being extensively dug over by James Neish in the early 1860s in a praiseworthy early attempt to make sense of the site [2, 3, 4]:
“The writer has ample proof, from conversing with workmen, that for a long period previous to 1834 the top of the hill has been generally resorted to when stones were required for dykes, drains, etc.; and David Rennie, land steward, who died in 1856 in his 103rd year, and who had resided in the neighbourhood for upwards of eighty years, told him that his plan was, first to discover a wall, and then to work it out, so far as the stones were suitable for his purpose, leaving the large stones lower down. During these workings, rude stone graves were found, lined and covered with flag stones, containing human skeletons.” [2, 441]
The wallheads seem to have been levelled and consolidated but the site has never been the target of modern systematic excavation. For this reason the amount of useful information available about the site is minimal. The stump of the broch-like structure appears as a mere ring of solid masonry a few feet high, the wall being 4.9m (16 ft) thick and enclosing a court 10.7m (35 ft) in diameter. The site is much overgrown.
Finds
Various finds were made by Neish [5, 322] but in the absence of any kind of stratigraphical context their chronological meaning for the site is limited. A list of those given to the National Museums is available [4] and three are illustrated here (Illus. 10.10). A bronze spiral finger-ring and an iron ring-headed pin of northern type suggest a middle Iron Age occupation appropriate for a broch or broch-like building but the bronze crook-headed pin is an a rare Scottish example of an early Iron Age form which in southern England would be dated to the 7th/6th centuries BC or thereabouts. This may mean that the hillfort is much older than the broch. Its rarity suggests that the site had a special status and makes one regret even more the destruction that its archaeological levels have sustained. There is also a fragmentary iron penannular brooch – another rare object (GN 34) and an iron needle.
Sources: 1. NMRS site no. NO 43 SE 7: 2. Neish 1862: 3. Neish 1865: 4. Donations of finds, Proc Soc Antiq Scot 17 (1882-83), 300-2: 5. Feachem 1963, 106. A number of other passing references are given in [1].
E W MacKie 2007
