Excavation

Date 2013

Event ID 993595

Category Recording

Type Excavation

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/993595

NJ 5072 0714 The site was first identified in 1998 when it was covered by trees and was provisionally interpreted as the remains of a roundhouse. When the forest was replanted in 2012 the earthwork was accidentally damaged, leading to its partial excavation. At the same time a local inhabitant recalled that it had originally included a setting of standing stones which were removed in the 1940s, long before their archaeological significance was recognised. The 2013 excavation had the aims of diagnosing the original form of the monument and collecting dating evidence.

It is clear that the remains were not those of a domestic building but belonged to a substantial ring cairn with well preserved inner and outer kerbs, the latter of which had been robbed. The entire monument had been constructed out of blocks of local stone. A fallen monolith was identified on its NE side, and towards the SW were two substantial sockets from which standing stones seem to have been removed. They flanked a shallow oval hollow of suitable size to have held the base of a recumbent stone. Comparison with the neighbouring monument of Tomnaverie, excavated and restored in 1999–2000, suggests that the structure at Blackhills was a previously unknown recumbent stone circle. It was one of the largest monuments of this type. Its position overlooking the Howe of Cromar also makes it one of the highest. If the ring cairn was unusually massive, the stone circle immediately outside it may have been of more modest proportions. Radiocarbon samples were collected from the land surface sealed by the monument.

The structure had a series of unusual features. The cairn was significantly larger on the NE side and may not have had a kerb towards the SW. The widest and highest part of the bank of rubble provided evidence of internal walling, supporting a flight of shallow ‘steps’, surfaced by flat slabs. They may have accommodated an audience looking across the recumbent stone toward the distant flank of Lochnagar. The stone circles at Tomnaverie and Waulkmill are also visible from this position. In the reverse direction the monument was built at the point where someone leaving the lower ground of the Howe would first see the summit of Mither Tap. A significant quantity of worked quartz extended outwards from the monument and was recorded in the forestry trenches by a team led by Moyra Simon and Jane Summers.

In a secondary phase, the original monument at Blackhills was covered by a uniform deposit of rounded boulders collected from glacial deposits nearby. In the centre of the site three features were excavated through this material. Two contained dense deposits of charcoal, whilst a third also included a quantity of cremated human bone. In this case the surface of the hillside was scorched, suggesting that it was in situ cremation pyre. These structures were covered by a thin layer of stones before the entire interior of the ring cairn was overlain by a dense deposit of 13,000 pieces of worked and broken quartz. Radiocarbon dating should provide a terminus post quem for the initial filling of the ring cairn and for the secondary deposits in the centre of the monument.

In view of the significance of the site, the structure and the area immediately around it have been taken out of forestry and are to be preserved in an area of grazed grassland.

Archive: RCAHMS (intended)

Funder: Aberdeenshire Council, with help in kind from University of Reading and the MacRobert Trust

Richard Bradley and Amanda Clarke, University of Reading, 2013

(Source: DES)