Candy Hatherley, a PhD student with the Department of Archaeology, recently undertook a week long survey of Iron Age sites on the Tarbat Peninsula in Easter Ross with the Scottish Governments team of archaeological surveyors.
The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS) holds the nations collection of archives for buildings, archaeology and history. They are experts in surveying upstanding archaeological sites and have been working on recording our heritage for over 100 years.
The RCAHMS were invited to join the University of Aberdeen team to produce a measured survey of three sites on the peninsula – a cliff top fort and two monumentally sized stone-built roundhouses, all of probable Iron Age date (c. 800BC – AD200). They undertook this work using a plane table and alidade, a method of survey that allows a surveyor to plot and create an accurate scale drawing on site by scaling down the site to a size that fits onto the drawing board. A plane table is a drawing board which is fixed to a tripod with the sighting device, the alidade, placed on top to observe the salient points of the site.
These accurate measured surveys of the sites will now be used to assist in the interpretation of the upstanding remains and will help guide the location of investigation trenches for excavation worked planned by the department for spring and summer 2014. They will also now form part of Scotland’s national collection of heritage housed at RCAHMS archives in Edinburgh and online (http://www.rcahms.gov.uk/canmore.html).
Photo shows the RCAHMS team surveying Castlehaven dun, a cliff top fort overlooking the Dornoch Firth.