Publication Account

Date 17 December 2011

Event ID 922068

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Publication Account

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/922068

The camp at Finavon was first discovered through cropmarks from the air by St Joseph in 1962 (1965: 83), lying on a terrace to the north of the River South Esk, only 1km WSW of the camp at Marcus. It measures 435m from NNW to SSE by 370m transversely, enclosing an area of 16ha (39.5 acres). Entrance gaps are visible in the centre of the NNW and SSE sides, both protected by tituli. A further entrance gap is visible in the ENE side, south of the A90 road that crosses the camp. St Joseph carried out several excavations on the camp, publishing that the ditch was 1.4m wide and 0.8m deep (1965: 83, although his notebooks suggest a level of variation across the sections that he excavated – RCAHMS St Joseph Collection: Notebooks 3 & 4). Further trenching on the ENE side in 1987, in advance of road widening, recorded a shallow ditch, with one steep side and flat bottom (the other side had been truncated), measuring about 2m in width and 0.3m in depth. Later features cut through the ditch, including an almost V-shaped ditch, 0.8m wide and 0.3m deep. Both ditches were believed to have been deliberately backfilled (Halpin 1992: 173–5, 178–9).

R H Jones