Archaeology Notes

Event ID 856002

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/856002

NJ81NW 4 centred 8123 1778

There is a late Bronze Age open village consisting of at least twenty hut-circles, and many more cairns, within the area of Skene's Wood (now heathery moorland). Eight of the hut-circles were examined and were between 25 and 35 feet in diameter, within banks of earth and stone 10 to 12 feet wide and 2 to 3 feet high. The entrances all faced approximately south and none showed any internal divisions or structures.

The cairns that were examined were of stones partly covered with soil and vegetation, and varied from 12 to 19 feet in diameter and from 18 inches to 2 feet 9 inches in height. One cairn measured 12 feet by 18 feet by 2 feet 6 inches high.

J G Callander 1925; W D Simpson 1943.

Area centred on NJ 8123 1778. In Skene's Wood, now replanted with conifers, the remains of 9 hut circles were found. They vary in diameter from 6.0m to 12.5m and in height from 0.2 to 0.8m while their turf covered banks vary in width from 1.5m to 4.0m. The entrances where apparent, are either from the south or the south east.

The cairns mentioned by Simpson are mostly heather covered and are probably clearance heaps.

Visible on RAF APs 540/1419 F 22: 0061-2.

Surveyed at 1:2500.

Visited by OS (EGC) 3 November 1961.

(Location cited as NJ 812 177 and name as Skene's Wood).

NMRS, MS/712/77.

A group of twelve hut-circles, together with numerous small cairns and an area of rig-and-furrow, is visible in the NW corner of Balbithan Wood, a Forestry Commission conifer plantation, which occupies an elevated area of poor ground about 1.5km N of the River Don. The ground was tree-covered in 1866, when it was known as Skene's Wood and surveyed for the 1st edition of the OS 6-inch map (Aberdeenshire 1870, sheet LV). The OS did not record any antiquities within the wood either then or when the map was revised in 1899 (1901, sheet LV.SW), but by the early 1920s most of the trees had been removed, and the presence of the hut-circles and small cairns was reported by a Mr AW Brown of Bankhead farm to JG Callander. The area remained open moorland until the 1950s when it was acquired by the Forestry Commission and put back under trees. RAF vertical aerial photographs (540/1419 F 22: 0061-2), taken in September 1954, record the site shortly after it was forestry-ploughed, and in 1961 the Archaeology Division of the Ordnance Survey mapped nine hut-circles for the 1965 edition of the 1:2500 map (NJ 81/17). Another three hut-circles were located in the course of the RCAHMS survey.

The hut-circles measure from 7m to 10m in diameter within walls reduced to grass- and tree-grown banks up to 4m in thickness and 0.8m in height. In the case of the three hut-circles found most recently, however, the banks are much slighter and are barely discernible in long grass. Where an entrance is visible, it is on the S or SE arc.

The small cairns, which measure up to 4m in diameter, are scattered across an extensive area. On the SE and SW they are found down to the margins of an area of boggy ground, but on the NE and NW they probably once extended into an area now occupied by rig-and-furrow. The rigs, which are best seen on the RAF vertical aerial photographs but are also clearly visible under short grass towards the N, measure up to 10m in breadth and are aligned roughly N and S.

Visited by RCAHMS (JRS, IF), August 1996.

NJ 812 178. This second phase of the Kintore Landscape Project followed on from work in 2004 (DES 2004, 15, 16; see also this volume) and examined two hut circles and associated clearance cairns at Balbithan Wood in March 2005. The hut circles survived up to two courses high, with patchily surviving occupation surfaces. Roundhouse 1 had a ring-ditch, together with numerous chipped and coarse stone tools and pot sherds. Fragments of charcoal were also retrieved. Roundhouse 2 provided one solitary find: a possible stone pot lid. The cairns were simply clearance cairns and contained

no artefacts or structures.

Archive to be deposited in NMRS.

Sponsor: HS.

M Cook and R Engl 2005.

(Location cited as NJ 812 177). Scheduled as 'Greenlands, hut circles and cairns 380m S of...'

Information from Historic Scotland, scheduling document dated 4 March 2008 [2009].