Excavation

Date 18 February 2013 - 23 February 2013

Event ID 993837

Category Recording

Type Excavation

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/993837

NC 2488 2197 As part of the Assynt Fire and Water Project, an excavation was undertaken, 18–23 February 2013, to investigate the moated enclosure at Inchnadamph. The site has always been enigmatic and prior to excavation it was considered undated. Although the similarity to moated granges of S and E Scotland offered the closest comparanda, the retrieval of fragments of a high-cross from the nearby graveyard, probably of SW Scottish provenance, raised the possibility of the site being an Early Christian site.

Excavation comprised a slot trench placed over the ditch and the exterior bank in the E area of the site, close to one of the probable entrances. The ditch was found to be a broad U-shape in profile, c1.5m deep with a flat base, with the fill largely derived from the erosion of the outer bank.

A large number of artefacts were recovered from the upper deposits, derived mainly from the eroded bank outside the site, and included ceramics similar to Hebridean Craggan Ware, a fragment of a disc-shaped rotary quern, a folding knife and a large quantity of iron working slag, including furnace base cakes. Given the lack of a local ceramic sequence, the pottery is not easily datable, but a post-medieval date is considered probable for the majority of the artefacts.

Waterlogged deposits were encountered at the base of the ditch, and although these could only be investigated to a limited extent, they contained waterlogged wood, including an off-cut of Scots pine, animal and fish bones and a sizable plant macrofossil and insect assemblage. Radiocarbon dates were obtained from samples taken from the upper and basal deposits of the ditch: these are statistically inseparable and indicate activity between the mid-15th and mid-17th century AD.

Funder: Heritage Lottery Fund

Graeme Cavers, Gordon Sleight and Charlotte Douglas, AOC Archaeology Group, 2013

(Source: DES)