stirling-1963-vol-1/05_065

Transcription

INTRODUCTION : THE EARLY IRON AGE
reconstruction. The exception is the Meikle Reive (No. 78), but here the character and sequence
of the structural phases are obscure and the evidence for dating is negligible, with the result
that little can be deduced from them.
With the exception of the broch (No. 100), all the Early Iron Age structures are of familiar
types recognisable elsewhere in the Lowlands. Of the forts, apart from Craigmaddie (No. 79)
and the Meikle Reive (No. 78), which may be related to the forts situated mainly in an area
outside and south-west of the county on either side of the estuary of the River Clyde, all the
remaining thirteen forts in Stirlingshire, together with the nearby examples at Castle Hill
(Dunbartonshire detached) and Knock Hill (Perthshire), are found within an area about
fifteen miles square in the lower parts of the Forth and Carron valleys. It is notable that there
are very few forts indeed in the adjacent region to the north of this area, none in those to the
south and west, and only a very few to the east in West Lothian and Clackmannanshire. In
the absence of any relics from the Stirlingshire forts, the directions from which their builders
came can at present be only a matter of speculation. But the possibilities must include an
eastward expansion of the Damnonii, a westward expansion of the Votadini ¹ and a westward
and southward movement of Picts. ²
There is no evidence to show the status of the forts during the Roman occupation of the
area, though it is natural to suppose that such foci of potential resistance would not have
been allowed to continue in occupation. A similar question, of course, arises in the case of the
broch (No. 100), and this will be discussed below.
The duns may be thought to lend some colour to these hypotheses. The evidence obtained
in the excavation of Castlehill Wood dun (No. 86) in 1955 ³ suggested that it was occupied,
and probably built, in the 1st or early 2nd century A.D. If this is correct, it is likely to have been
the work either of people who had come to the area before the arrival of the Romans early in
the last quarter of the 1st century A.D., or else of settlers who entered it during the forty years
that elapsed between the first and second phases of the Roman occupation. ⁴ The general
distribution of duns as at present known points to their occurring chiefly south-west of the
Clyde, in an area which largely coincides with the territory assigned to the Damnonii, and also
in Argyll and Bute, probably that of the Epidii. ⁵ Duns are in addition scattered throughout
the insular and coastal regions of the north-west as far as Lewis and Sutherland and through
the Great Glen, while upward of thirty examples, probably built by settlers from the west
occur in the region of upper Strathtay. It is suggested that the occurrence of duns in Stirling-
shire constitutes evidence for the consolidation of the area of Damnonian settlement up to but
not across the River Forth. This conclusion would agree well enough with Ptolemy's record,
while it would not conflict with the occupation of "Manau" by the Votadini at a later date
(supra, p. 5). The dun at Craigton (No. 89), however, alone among those in the county, has
outworks of a kind which are commonly found among the small hill-forts and duns of Argyll,
but which have not been observed in any quantity elsewhere. It is therefore possible that this
structure may represent an outlier from that region. ⁶

1 Inventory of Roxburghshire, p. 2.
2 For a discussion of the probable nature of the proto-Pictish and Pictish peoples, see The Problem of the Picts (ed. Wainwright),
in particular 49 ff.
3 P.S.A.S., xc (1956-7), 24 ff.
4 Cf. Ibid., lxxxv (1950-1), 114.
5 Ibid., xc (1956-7), 42-5 and fig. 13; ibid., xxxviii (1903-4), 205 ff; Chadwick, H. M., Early Scotland (1949), 151 ff.
6 Chadwick, loc. cit.; The Problem of the Picts (ed. Wainwright), 47.

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