Newsletter – Issue 154, July 2005

Castle Law and Braidwood

Three of us visited Castle Law and Braidwood, two Iron Age sites on the southwest side of the Pentlands.
Castle Law is a standard medium sized fort surrounded by well-preserved ramparts and ditches.  It was probably built around the middle of the first millennium BC.  There are no hut circles inside, and as with many other forts this raises the question as to whether it functioned as a market or a meeting place with the walls giving added status to a tribal centre.  Although there are no signs of habitations, a souterrain has been built into the ramparts of the fort.  This has been excavated and restored and there is a layer of concrete between the walls and the roof making life a lot easier for those of us with stiff backs.  Half way along the passage there is a low entrance into a round chamber which has a low roof and is not for the claustrophobic.  The souterrain was probably used for storage and in this case there is no evidence that it was linked to a round house.
Braidwood is an example of the evolution of forts and settlements.  There are sections of a palisade trench that originally circled the site.  Inside there are a large number of well-defined ring ditch huts that were probably built and rebuilt over a long period.  At the time the site was abandoned the occupants had started to build a bank and ditch around it but this was never completed.  An early supposition was that this happened when they saw the Romans marching up the road but as the settlement dates to around the 2nd century BC this can be rejected and a more likely cause for moving may have been a crop failure in the area
Further outing to Roxburgh Castle – if at first you don’t succeed –
Earlier in the year two of us spent an interesting afternoon at Roxburgh Castle and found many tantalising remains of a castle that played a major part in the warfare between England and Scotland.  The Society Committee felt that members should be given another opportunity to visit the castle when the weather was likely to be more clement.  In view of this a visit has been arranged for 2.00pm on Thursday, 11th August.  To get there drive through Kelso on to the A698 and then immediately turn right on to the A699.  Travel along this road for just under a mile until you come upon the castle on the left hand side.  This appears as a long mound and the only parking is on the verge of the road.

Excavation at Castlehill, Penicuik

By the time this Newsletter is distributed our third season at Penicuik will be over, but, having found nothing in the previous two years to give us an idea of the date of the paving found, we can
now say Iron Age.  Two nicely rounded stone cobbles have come out of Trench 2, both with ends ground to a ‘V’ profile by being rubbed on something such as a saddle quern.  We will be getting further opinions on these artifacts.  The comments to date are that they look ‘later rather than earlier’ and from David Connolly, the Midlothian Archaeologist who visited the site on 3rd July, that the first of the two finds ‘is very similar to one found in a late Iron Age broch in Orkney!’
We have four very dark soil samples that may relate to hearths and these will have to go for analysis to see whether they appear to be domestic (pollen, seeds and charcoal) or possibly slag indicating some sort of metalworking.
Trench 3 across the inner bank at the SW end of the site requires a lot more work to section and the decision was taken not to proceed further this year due to the likelihood of a trench collapse during the winter.
Trench 4’s high resistance proved to be due to an area of well draining sand and has been backfilled.

Scottish Archaeology Month

Cramond Heritage Trust will be joining EAFS by holding SAM events on Saturday 3rd and Sunday 4th September from 2pm till 5pm.  There will be two guided walks each day – one to the riverside iron mills and the other around the archaeology of the area.  Patrick Cave-Browne will hold an ancient technology workshop on the Saturday, and EAFS itself will be doing a ground resistance survey, as mentioned above.  The Trust’s exhibition will be open each afternoon. Full details will be available nearer the time on www.cramondheritagetrust.org.uk

Autumn Geophysical Programme

Four ground resistance surveys, one hopefully augmented by working with Edinburgh University Department of Geology and Geophysics to add a magnetometry survey, will be fitted into the next five months.

Cramond

The Roman fort angles across the piece of ground that lies just to the north of Kirk Cramond, the small road that runs in to the Tower and the church hall.
Some small excavations were made by the Raes close to the Glebe Road wall and another across the line of the fort wall about 40 metres away.  The remainder to the west of the early EAFS trenches has never been surveyed and although it may be very disturbed by ‘operations instigated by the lairds of Cramond House’ it is however worth surveying.  This will be done over the weekend 3rd – 4th September as our contribution to Scottish Archaeology Month.

Cramond Tower

The owner found a Roman ditch when he excavated a garden pond adjacent to the Tower.  He has given permission for us to use a ground resistance survey to see whether the ditch proceeds to curve to the east aligning with the ditch, found in the 2004 survey to the east of Cramond House, that runs along the edge of the old raised beach.

Lauriston

To the north of Lauriston Castle grounds and to the east of the road to Cramond lies the reputed Roman cemetery.  John Wood in his 1794 book on Cramond writes of ‘a large sepulchre of flat stones’ on the site, adding ‘this monument is now completely destroyed’.  We will see what we can find and if the University Geology and Geophysics Department join us with magnetometry it could help find cremation burials.

Eddleston

The original plan was to ground resistance survey the site of Hoptoun Tower but the farmer has currently dumped material on the site and that prevents this taking place.  Trevor Cowie is looking at the possibility of a survey over another demolished tower house.

Edinburgh & East Lothian Archaeology Conference

This conference is being held on 10th September at the Brunton Theatre, Musselburgh. Tickets (£15, concessions £10) available on the day or by phoning the Brunton Theatre on 0131 665 2240 or via their website www.bruntontheatre.co.uk

Auldhame

During the period from 25th May until the end of the excavation on 15th July members of the Society jointly contributed almost 100 working days to this dig.  During this period the ‘body count’ rose from 160 to a final total of 260, largely as a result of the efforts of Society members.  Most of the bodies, adults, juveniles and neonatals, had been tightly swaddled and placed in shallow graves that commonly intersected earlier graves.  There were a number of cist burials on the site and a few coffins.  A few graves were marked by a thin spread of beach pebbles or of shell sand.
An examination of the stones used in the construction of the three phases of the chapel buildings and of the cists established that, with only a few exceptions, all the building materials – red and white sandstone and a few well rounded boulders of basic igneous rocks – could have been sourced on the nearby beach, in particular in the area NE of the ruined Seacliff House.  In this area of the beach there are also banks of shingle containing pebbles having a similar range of compositions to those found on the site, spreads of shell sand and a scattering of large rounded boulders of igneous rock types.
There can be little doubt regarding the importance of the site and EAFS members and the volunteers from other groups felt greatly privileged to have been invited to participate in its excavation.

Newsletter – Issue 152, March 2005

Outings (from Bill MacLennan)
Proposed visit to two old churches

On the north side of the High Street of South Queensferry there is a little jewel of a church that was built in 1461 to support a Carmelite Priory. Excavation revealed the foundations of the Priory buildings but little remains on the surface. Despite the fact that it has gone through a number of restorations much of it is as it was 550 years ago and St Mary’s provides a delightful setting for its current use as the local Episcopalian Church.
Some distance to the west there is Abercorn Church. Most of it dates from the 16th century though there is a blocked entrance with a Norman arch. The most interesting feature on the site is a small museum containing cross slabs and grave markers from as early as the 10th century. There are also hog backed stones designed by the Vikings. Even earlier than this there were the followers of St Ninian who established a community here in the 6th century.
The visit will start at 2.00pm on Friday, 15th April outside the front door of the Episcopalian Church. There is plenty of parking space if you take the next road to the west into a large car park. It would be appreciated if we could all be on time since members of the congregation are opening the church for us.
Once we are finished there, travel west out of South Queensferry and join the A904 at the roundabout over the M90 and head towards Bo’ness for about two miles before turning to the right onto an undesignated road at Woodend. Turn to the left at Parkhead and this should take you to Abercorn.

Lectures

On Tuesday, 19th April we have Geoff Bailey on The Home Front in Falkirk and District, 1939-1945, and then, the last one before the summer break, on Tuesday, 17th May Fraser Hunter is talking on Life on the Roman Frontier – Recent Excavations at Inveresk and Cramond.

Excavation at Castlehill, Penicuik

Two preliminary sessions have taken place on the site at Penicuik; the first entailed taking a lot more EDM readings to record the NE slope of the hill, and the second cleared that slope of tons of dead wood. Clearing the wood out of the way means we can make a final resistance survey, albeit on a very sloping area of ground, to see whether there are any features on this side of the castle.
The second session was also used to remove the blue covers and accumulation of winter rubbish from the trench and the southern paved area.
On Sunday, 3rd April starting at 10.30am we hope to resume excavations and to have enough members present to complete the ground resistance survey.

The Cramond Geophysical Report

It is now three months since the report on the area resistivity survey, linear array measurements and magnetometry survey was submitted. To investigate further we would require permission from the
Cramond and Harthill Trust, who act for the landowners, and from Historic Scotland, as the site is scheduled. We have received no comment on the content of the report so, at the moment, no future action is foreseen.

Ground Resistance Measurements at Dalmeny

Having just written that the survey at Corstorphine is Occasional Paper 11, Dalmeny as Occasional Paper 12 can now be added. The survey started in September 2004 as our ‘public’ participation in Scottish Archaeology month with eight 20 by 20m squares on the NW grass verge nearest to the redeveloped Wester Dalmeny farm steading. It was during this redevelopment that the watching brief of CFA Archaeology Ltd turned up medieval pottery and floors suggesting that more could be found under the grass verges alongside the village street. The high resistances in our squares were irregular in shape and did not look like house foundations – in fact they may not have been man-made at all. The geological map states that the bedrock could be ‘at or near the surface’ so our response could have been due to local geology.
The four squares on the verge to the south of the church showed a high resistance strip, some 80 metres long parallel with the curb, and showing little detail. Not easy to come to any conclusions on that either.
The most encouraging survey was on the W end of the 180 metre stretch on the S side grass verge; the east end 80m only showed a few high resistance blobs. Two rectangular outlines appeared end-on to the road which did not suggest a village street lined with houses facing on to the road but some very low resistance lines close to the pavement could represent the robbed out walls of houses and some have higher resistance infilling that may be cobbled floors.
We are unlikely to return to dig at Dalmeny village but it is, at least, now on record.