Redcastle, Lunan Bay, Angus (original) (raw)
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Fieldwork at Newton Farm, Cambuslang (NGR NS 672 610) was undertaken in advance of housing development in 2005–6. A cluster of six shallow Neolithic pits were excavated, and a collection of 157 round-based, carinated bowl sherds and a quern fragment were recovered from them. The pits produced a date range of 3700 to 3360 cal BC. Most of the pits yielded burnt material, and one of the pits showed evidence of in situ burning. The pottery may form ‘structured deposits’. A Bronze Age adult cremation placed in a Food Vessel dated to 3610±30 BP (2040–1880 cal BC) was set in a wider landscape of single and multiple cremations and inhumations on the river terraces overlooking the Clyde. A possible unurned cremation was also identified. This was cut by the course of a small ring-ditch dated to the very late Bronze Age or early Iron Age 2520±30 BP (800–530cal BC).
The excavation of a Bronze Age cemetery at Seafield West, near Inverness, Highland
Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland
Excavations in 1996 in advance of a major commercial development at Seafield West revealed a Bronze Age cemetery. Inside a ring-ditch were two adjacent graves with wooden coffins, one a boat-shaped hollowed tree-trunk, the other plank-built. Both had probably contained crouched inhumation burials. Grave goods in the former included a bronze dagger of ‘Butterwick’ type whose scabbard of wood and cattle hide produced a date of 3385 ± 45 BP (1870–1520 cal BC at 2s), slightly later than expected; those in the latter included an ‘Irish Bowl’ Food Vessel, believed to date to c 2000 BC. Both items indicate links with Ireland. Also inside the ring-ditch were: a short stone cist; a pit containing cremated human remains accompanied by three burnt barbed-and-tanged arrowheads and a mandible fragment, probably of a dog or fox; and three pits, at least one of which might have been an inhumation grave. Outside, and to the east, was a second short stone cist with a Beaker; to the west, a cluster o...
A prehistoric cremation burial at Duns Law Farm, near Duns, Scottish Borders
A large prehistoric pit was uncovered during a watching brief on a water main installation. The pit was partially stone-lined and two small scoops were identified at the base. These contained one complete and one partial Beaker vessel. The fills of the pit produced a small quantity of cremated human bone which represented a minimum of four individuals (three adults and a juvenile). Also mixed into the fills were sherds of other Beaker vessels, a few lithics, a stone axehead, and fragments of Neolithic pottery. Radiocarbon determinations produced early Neolithic dates for four samples of human bone and a grain of wheat, and one human bone sample produced a Bronze Age date later than the generally accepted currency of Beaker pottery production in Scotland. Interpretation of this strange collection of material is discussed with reference to Neolithic and Bronze Age burial practices; the evidence for the use of this pit in the Neolithic for cremation burial is a rare find and provides a valuable contribution to our understanding of this period and type of monument.
Excavation of an Iron Age burial mound, Loch Borralie, Durness, Sutherland
Scottish Archaeological Internet Reports, 2004
As part of the Historic Scotland Human Remains Call Off Contract, Glasgow University Archaeological Research Division (GUARD) undertook an archaeological evaluation of the find spot of a human skull from a cairn at Loch Borralie, Sutherland (NGR NC 3790 6761). Excavation recovered the remains of two burials beneath the cairn and established that the cairn was multi-phased. One individual was an adult male (Skeleton 1), while the other was immature and of undeterminable sex (Skeleton 2). Both individuals showed signs of ill health, and dogs and/or rats appear to have gnawed their bones. A ring-headed pin was recovered close to Skeleton 1 during the excavation. A radiocarbon date was obtained from the left humerus of Skeleton 1 of 40 cal BC - cal AD210 at 2 sigma (OxA-10253). Excavation revealed that the cairn, broadly sub-rectangular in form, had a maximum height of 1.2m and was composed of large, sub-angular and sub-rounded rocks (including quartz and quartzite) and occasional round...
2002
Excavation of a cemetery of the first millennium AD revealed the remains of over 100 burials, amongst which were the most southerly examples of square-ditched graves so far excavated in Scotland. The burials were of mixed type and included numerous stone long cists, an unusual fourposted dug grave, two square-ditched graves, one of which may have had a wooden structure around or over it, dug graves with evidence of log coffins and pebble-lined or long-cist infant burials. An extensive suite of radiocarbon dates, the largest from a cemetery of this type, was obtained, the results of which suggested a floruit in the middle of the first millennium AD. The cemetery overlay late prehistoric boundary features associated with a ring-groove structure. Adjacent to the cemetery site, an enigmatic rectangular structure was excavated and radiocarbon-dated to the Late Bronze Age.