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Archaeology Notes

Event ID 672381

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/672381

NJ96SW 8 9049 6258 to 9055 6262.

(NJ 9049 6258 and 9055 6262) Castle Hills (NAT)

(NJ 9055 6262) Stone Cist found (NAT).

OS 6" map, (1959).

The Castle Hills are two prominent mounds of naturally stratified sand and gravel known, respectively, as Eastern Castle Hill and Western Castle Hill (Low 1933).

Eastern Castle Hill: The Ordnance Survey Name Book (ONB 1870) states that a cist had been found here. Three more cists were found during sand-quarrying between 28 August and 20 November 1908. They all lay in the SE quadrant of the mound near its base and were aligned NE - SW. The first contained an unburnt human jaw, a semicircular flint knife and a Ca type beaker (NMAS: EQ 295). The second yielded a Cb type beaker (NMAS: EQ 296), and the third a Cb type beaker (now in Aberdeen Museum), a flexed skeleton and fragments of wood and charcoal (Callander 1909). A fifth cist, found and excavated on 27 December 1932, from the same part of the mound, yielded only a short-necked beaker, now in Aberdeen Museum. (Low 1933) Western Castle Hill : A short cist was ploughed up here 24th December 1932, the skeleton of which had been disturbed and was without its skull. With it were found two pieces of a perforated polished stone hammer. Prof Low (Low 1933) deduced that it was from this cist that a skull was donated to the Marischal College Museum before 1876, though he confused it with the cist published at Eastern Castle Hill and erroneously ascribed the published cist to the Western Castle Hill.

Name Book 1870; J G Callander 1909; A Low 1933; M E C Mitchell 1934.

Only the short cist found on the top of Western Castle Hill at NJ 9049 6258 remains. Oriented NE - SW, it measures 1.4m x 0.6m with the SW end slab dislodged. The finds are still in the Marischal College Museum. Cist surveyed at 1/2500.

Visited by OS (NKB) 10 March 1967.

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