Rhynie, Aberdeenshire

Rhynie, Aberdeenshire
The Craw Stane with Tap o'Noth hillfort in the background (Photo courtesy of Cathy MacIver).

Wednesday 3 July 2013

New kite shot of large square enclosure

Before your eyeballs you can see our latest kite shot of the larger square enclosure courtesy of Oskar's magic kite-cam. In the NW part of the enclosure entrance you can see a group of features that may be part of an Iron Age ring-ditch roundhouse. We are not sure yet whether this is contemporary with the square enclosure - we haven't found any artefacts in the features associated with the ring-ditch yet, but we have charcoal from one feature that should provide a radiocarbon date.

Ring-ditch houses is a name given to a particular type of prehistoric roundhouse that has large erosion gullies, probably created from the stalling of animals within the house. Only the foundations of these structures tend to survive and our example consists of postholes, the ring-ditch and a large central pit full of burnt stone, ash and fire-cracked stone. Hopefully more will come out in the post-excavation and radiocarbon dating to tell us whether this structure is contemporary or earlier (or indeed later) than the square enclosure itself.

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