Cardean

Cardean, Temporary Camps NO 299 463 NO24NE 15

About 500m to the E of Cardean Roman fort (NO24NE 12) there is a Roman temporary camp which has been associated with the campaigns of the emperor Septimius Severus (c. AD 208-11). Roughly rectangular on plan, it measures about 790m from NE to SW by 665m transversely (c. 52.5ha). Rectilinear ditches identified within the NE half of the interior may form part of the perimeter of a second camp, at least 13ha in area, whose NE side appears to have coincided with the same side of the larger.

RCAHMS 1983.

(St Joseph, 1973, 224).

The camp at Cardean was discovered from the air by St Joseph in the early 1950s (St Joseph 1955: 87), just to the east of the Flavian fort. Both fort and camp lie on a triangular plateau east of the confluence of the River Isla and the Dean Water. The village of Meigle lies just over 1km to the south-west.

The camp lies on ground that slopes gently to the north, with a road running along its northern perimeter. It is orientated from south-west to north-east, with the whole of the south-west side, two rounded corners and parts of the south-east and north-west sides visible as cropmarks on air photographs. Part of the south-east side survives as an upstanding earthwork in Crow Wood, accentuated by a drainage ditch. However, there are several large drainage ditches cutting through the wood, and another drainage ditch had been mistaken for the camp in the past as a result of the south corner being assumed to lie in the field north of the western spur of the Wood (Ordnance Survey NO24NE , published 1977, from information supplied by St Joseph). St Joseph recorded that two small trenches on the south-east side in the east part of Crow Wood did not find the ditch, and he proposed that this was therefore the position of an entrance (1973: 224). The east part of the south-east side lies in a field of linear cropmarks (presumably for drainage), but can be discerned running up to the field boundary, and was confirmed in trenches by St Joseph (RCAHMS St Joseph Collection: Notebook 7). The north-east side is unclear, although there are faint traces of a linear cropmark on air photographs, and St Joseph also recorded it from the air and through trial trenches (1955: 87; 1973: 224; RCAHMS St Joseph Collection: Notebook 7). He plotted it running immediately east of the field 158 boundary (RCAHMS DC 37284) and excavated small trenches here in 1975 (RCAHMS St Joseph Collection: Notebook 7). This gives the camp overall dimensions of some 830m from north-east to south-west by around 650m transversely, enclosing 54ha (133 acres).

An entrance gap, protected by a titulus, is visible in the centre of the south-west side. On the south-east side, at the point where the drainage ditch stops and turns sharply to the south, there is a low mound, about 10m in length, 5.5m broad and a maximum of 0.4m high, which may represent the traces of a titulus.

Trenches by St Joseph recorded that the ditch of the camp was up to 3.6m wide and 1.75m deep. He also noted a possible second camp lying within this camp (Cardean II, see possible camps), with ditches recorded on the north-west and south-east sides.

R H Jones

In 1969, St Joseph noted a possible second camp lying within the eastern part of the camp at Cardean (1973: 224). Excavations on the ditch of this camp recorded that it measured some 2.4m in width and 1m in depth, and was deliberately filled in with clay and sandy subsoil. He recorded that it measured at least 310m from south-west to north-east, and that the two linear cropmarks were 430m apart (1973: 224). This therefore would mean a camp of some 13.3ha (33 acres). The north-west linear cropmark to which St Joseph refers is clearly visible, but those to the south-east do not have the same regularity of form, and there are numerous linear cropmarks (probably mostly drainage ditches) in this field (see illus 94). St Joseph plotted the plan of the large camp (RCAHMS St Joseph Collection: DC 37284), but did not include the plan of the smaller camp. The second camp was discovered at a time when St Joseph was looking for a series of Flavian 30-acre camps. It is possible that there was an element of wishful thinking in the second camp, and it therefore must remain as a possible site until further evidence is available.

R H Jones.