stirling-1963-vol-1/05_126

Transcription

No. 105 -- HOMESTEADS -- No. 106
people during a single, continuous occupation of the
site.
The only other building inside the enclosure stood
immediately to the E. of the farmhouse, and was probably
a barn or byre - the equivalent in timber of the stone-
walled rectangular steadings that accompany the round
farmhouses at such Early Iron Age sites as The Allasdale ¹
and Clettraval ² in the Outer Hebrides. Its plan cannot
be reconstructed with certainty from the maze of post-
holes found in the area, but it was probably rectangular
rather than circular. Round the N. half of the compound
there was a sunken cobbled yard which may have been
fenced off from the house, and which probably served
the dual purpose of enclosing stock and of improving the
drainage of the house site. The ditch surrounding the
compound was not defensive, being not more than 3 ft.
in depth, and can only have been intended to drain off
surface water from the interior. It had two entrances,
one on the NE. being 7 ft. 6 in. wide, while the other,
some 40 ft. further S., was no less than 19 ft. wide and
was flanked by four short lengths of palisading, two of
which projected inwards from the ditch terminals, and
the other two outwards, as shown in Fig. 27. The
purpose of these flanking strips of palisading is unknown,
but it is thought that they may have been connected with
a ring fence which preceded the ditch and followed the
same line. For both the ditch and an external wall closely
associated with it, and similarly non-defensive in
character, seem to have been comparatively late features
of the site, the wall being apparently unfinished when the
homestead was abandoned.
The relics from the excavations included a cup or lamp
of sandstone, whetstones, stone discs, whorls, part of a
small, ornamental stone ring, pieces of other perforated
objects of stone and lignite of uncertain use, a stone
bearing a cup-shaped hollow on one surface, and part of
the upper stone of a bun-shaped rotary quern. The single
piece of native pottery found was of indeterminate age,
and only one bone, that of an ox, was discovered. There
were no Roman relics. Consideration of the finds, most
of which can be paralleled from the vitrified fort at
Dunagoil (Bute), and of the structural affinities of the
two house types, suggest that the homestead was occupied
within the period between the Late Bronze Age and the
arrival of the Romans in A.D. 80.

810876 -- NS 88 NW ("Farmstead") -- 31 May 1956

105. Homestead, Keir Hill, Gargunnock (Site).
This homestead, of which no trace remains visible on
the surface, occupies the summit of Keir Hill, a pro-
minent grassy knoll situated near the E. end of
Gargunnock village, 100 yds. SW. of the Parish Church
(No. 172) and immediately N. of Mill Farm. The knoll
rises steeply to a height of 25 ft. and is bordered on the E.
by the Gargunnock Burn. The top is ovoid on plan
(Fig. 29) and measures 95 ft. from NE. to SW. by 56 ft.
transversely. and at its NE. end a flattish circular area,
measuring about 56 ft. in diameter, is slightly raised
above the remainder, which slopes gently to the SW. In
1957, an excavation of the raised area, carried out by the
Commission's officers, revealed the remains of a home-
stead of the Early Iron Age. The following account is a
summary of the published report. ³
The site was found to have been very severely dis-
turbed, but sufficient evidence remained to indicate a
roughly circular hut, 29 ft. in diameter, consisting of two
concentric rings of posts 6 ft. apart. The area enclosed
by the inner ring was paved and contained a rectangular
hearth, while the space between the two settings of posts
bore traces of a clay floor. One of the post-holes of the
outer ring was set against the face of a ruinous stretch of
walling which had probably formed part of an outer
revetment. The entrance faced S., and three post-holes
which lay outside the circumference of the outer ring
may have belonged to an entrance porch. A heavy layer
of ash and burnt material, which covered the whole area
occupied by the hut, indicated that it had been destroyed
by fire, and the absence of any accumulation of occupa-
tion debris suggested that it had not been occupied for
long before its destruction. There was some evidence
that a stone wall had been built round the crest-line of the
summit surrounding the hut. Only the intermittent
traces of a heavily robbed outer face remained, together
with quantities of tumbled debris. On the N., W. and S.
this ruinous wall overlay an earlier palisade-trench,
measuring 1 ft. 6 in. in width and varying from 1 ft. 3 in.
to 2 ft. 6 in. in depth, which was tightly packed with
stones. The few finds from the excavation included a
melon bead, one sherd of pottery and fragments of glass,
all of which were of Roman manufacture and suggested
a date for the homestead within the latter half of the first
or the beginning of the 2nd century A.D.
A complex of banks and terracing is also to be seen on
the knoll, but these features are probably secondary to
the homestead and may, in fact, be of no great age.

706942 -- NS 79 SW ("Keir Hill") -- 28 September 1957

106. Homestead (probable), Bowhouse (Site). This
structure was located from the air as a crop-mark and
photographed by Dr. St. Joseph. ⁴ It is situated at a
height of about 20 ft. O.D. on carse-land between the
Grange Burn and the River Avon at a point half a mile
SSW. of Bowhouse farmhouse. The crop-marks appear
to be those of an approximately circular enclosure
measuring about 100 ft. in diameter within two con-
centric ditches about 15 ft. apart. The actual markings
are only about 6 ft. in width, and may therefore represent
the heels of ditches of which the upper levels have been
ploughed away. The entrance, about 12 ft. wide, is on
the W., and the terminals of both ditches are out-turned
for short distances on either side of it as if defining a

1 P.S.A.S., lxxxvii (1952-3), 80-105.
2 P.P.S., xiv (1948), 46-68).
3 P.S.A.S., xci (1957-8), 78 ff.
4 No. DH 34 in the C.U.C.A.P.

-- 91