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Archaeology Notes
Event ID 706008
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Archaeology Notes
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/706008
NS88SE 24 8632 8115
(NS 8632 8115) Fort (NR) (site of)
OS 6" map (1967)
Air photographs reveal the crop marks of a native fort in the N corner of the plateau on which stand the Roman forts of Camelon (NS88SE 23).
It was excavated in 1961 by an extra-mural class of Edinburgh University under Miss E Field, who confirmed that it was bounded by four concentric ditches, visible on A Ps as running in a curve from the NW edge of the plateau to within 50' of the NE edge, where there may have been an entrance. Within the interior, which measures about 150' N-S by 200' E-W, were found the foundation trenches of an oval house, greatest diameter 40', a rectangular structure, possibly an open enclosure, and a round house cut through the foundation trenches of the above. All the pottery discovered, without stratigraphic relations to the structure, was Roman, from the adjacent fort.
S Cruden 1961; RCAHMS 1963, visited 1953.
There is no trace of this promontory fort. Recent quarrying on the NW side has exposed sections of two ditches.
Site surveyed at 1:1250.
Visited by OS (DWR) 8 February 1974
The site has been entirely destroyed by old quarrying. The overall size, the internal round houses and the possible palisade nature of the concentric ditches, suggest this was a homestead rather than a fort.
Visited by OS (JRL) 15 April 1980
Full excavation report of this native site illustrates that there were three phases of occupation, represented by two circular timber houses, with part of a rectilinear structure, possibly of Roman origin, between. A complex defence system was revealed, but could not be related to the sequence of occupation of the site which was apparently in use during the 1st and 2nd centuries AD. The three substantial ditches suggest a fortification rather than a homestead, although by analogy it is probably an earlier homestead with palisade ditches, later fortified more strongly.
E V W Proudfoot 1980.
