Publication Account
Date 17 December 2001
Event ID 923458
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/923458
In 1801, Colonel Shand appears to have been the first to interpret Normandykes as Roman in date (Chalmers 1807: i, 125). The Statistical Account of 1795 refers to the ‘Norman’s Dyke’ as a Danish camp, noting that some people also believed that it dated to the time of William the Conqueror (Sinclair 1795b: xvi, 380–1). This view was corrected for the New Statistical Account of 1845, noting that the work of Shand and others had confirmed that the camp was Roman in date, probably belonging to the campaigns of Lollius Urbicus (NSA 1845: xii, 108). Captain Henderson produced a plan of the camp which was reproduced in Chalmers’ Caledonia (1807: i, opp. 125).
The camp lies just to the south of the village of Peterculter, on a low ridge on the north side of the River Dee. It measures about 895m from east to west by about 510m, enclosing an area of some 44.3ha (109 acres). The majority of the camp lies in arable fields, and much of the perimeter has been recorded as cropmarks from the air, but the eastern part of the north rampart and ditch survives as the north side of a plantation, accentuated by the superimposition of a plantation bank. This ‘rampart’ appears to be up to 6.3m in width and 1.4m in height, with a probable drain cut along the original line of the ditch. The western part of the north side lies under a stone wall. In addition, the rampart is detectable on the east side at the point where it is crossed by a field boundary, where it is almost 10m wide and 0.3m high.
No entrance is visible in the upstanding sector of the camp, but the presence of tituli in the western part of the south side and in the centre of the west suggests that the camp probably had six gates. In addition, Captain Henderson also illustrated a titulus in the centre of the east side (Chalmers 1807: i, opp 125).
The site was subject to excavations by Richmond and McIntyre in 1935, who ‘verified with the spade the Roman origin’ of the camp, and intended to return (Taylor 1936: 237). Further details are not provided, but Simpson records a trial excavation conducted in October 1936 with Richmond and McIntyre near the north-west corner under the stone dyke of the field wall (Simpson 1943: 57–8; Crawford 1949: 112). Further excavations were undertaken in 1971 by St Joseph in a field on the north side of the camp, revealing a small ditch measuring 0.5m in width and 0.15m in depth (RCAHMS St Joseph Collection: Notebook 6). Small-scale excavations along a forest track through the camp in 2006 recovered at least three probable ovens and many more features interpreted as hearths (Scotia Archaeology 2006).
The camp bends in the south side, just to the east of the titulus. There may be a corresponding slight bend opposite in the north side if the ditch follows the field boundary for its west sector (as illustrated in Simpson 1943: 57–8), and the plantation bank in the wood for its east sector (see above, section 7a).
R H Jones.
