Carn Glas Chambered Cairns, Inverness: An Update

by Jonathan Wordsworth

The following is an addendum to the previous Carn Glas blog post of July 2023.

Drone image of Carn Glas after clearance of gorse looking north to Inverness and Moray Firth ©AHickie

It took two more days of work in August to clear the remaining gorse scrub off the cairn to reveal the monument in its glory.  With funding from Historic Environment Scotland we were able to get contractors to shred much of the cut waste, though a substantial amount of gorse remains outside the cairn on the east side.

We were fortunate to get Andy Hickie to fly his drone over the cleaned monument and as the photo above shows, this highlights the prominent position of the cairn overlooking the Moray Firth and with views to the hills north of the Great Glen and south to the Monadhliaths. This view is largely obscured by modern conifer plantations today but it now shows the significance of the monument’s siting in Neolithic times. No new details on the construction of cairns were visible on the ground in addition to that previously recorded by Henshall and Ritchie, but skilled processing of his aerial images by Andy Hickie has revealed the profile of this monument. (See also the recent Current Archaeology article on Carn Glas, featuring Jonathan’s text and Andy’s images. A transcription of the text from Henshall & Ritchie can be downloaded here).

Inked screenshot looking north with a profile of the topography on the southernmost cairn ©Andy Hickie

Raigmore Hospital, Inverness: From EMS to NHS

by Marion Ruscoe

Raigmore Hospital, 1948 © HES (Aerofilms Collection)

Raigmore Hospital was erected as part of the Emergency Medical Scheme (EMS) on part of  the Raigmore estate and opened in 1941.  The Emergency Medical Scheme was established to provide adequate medical facilities for expected wartime casualties and Raigmore was one of seven new hospitals built during the war.  They were all built to a standard design, but because of restrictions in the use of timber and steel, the buildings at Raigmore were brick, single storey and flat roofed.  An aerial photograph, taken in 1948, of the new hospital shows the layout to the south of Raigmore House on the east side of Inverness.   There were 16 individual wards and an isolation unit providing about 670 beds.  Staff accommodation was provided at the north-west corner of the site and a further collection of individual blocks between the staff accommodation and the wards housed administration, kitchens, dining rooms, laboratories and other services.

After the war, Raigmore continued to provide hospital services to Inverness and the surrounding area along with, principally, the R.N.I., Culduthel Hospital and Hilton Hospital but by the 1960s the facilities in Inverness were not meeting modern needs and in 1962 plans for a new general hospital to serve Inverness were put in place.   As an EMS hospital Raigmore was never designed to last for ever.  By 1966 work had begun on the new hospital for the Highlands and it was decided that it had to be at Raigmore, because that was where there was enough space to develop the facilities.  Phase 1 of the development was opened in 1970.  It incorporated the Outpatients Department, laboratories, pharmacy, physiotherapy and records.  Dr. James Bruce, who in 1947 was appointed consultant biochemist, finally got the new laboratory that he was promised at interview.

An aerial view of the hospital in 1972 shows Phase 1 at the bottom of the photo, but the original hospital buildings are still there and in use.  When comparing this view with the earlier view taken in 1948 the only other differences are that the walled garden has become part of the hospital car park, and the College of Nursing has been built to the right of the wards.

Barrow-Loads of Barrows: Excavating a Monumental Pictish Cemetery at Tarradale on the Black Isle

by Eric Grant

Drone aerial photo showing barrows of different sizes and shapes (Drone photo: Andy Hickie)

In the first three weeks of September 2019 volunteers from the North of Scotland Archaeological Society supported by members of the local community excavated a suspected Pictish cemetery in a field near Tarradale House. Aerial photographs had previously shown the possible existence of a number of barrow graves in the area but there was little to see on the surface as the mounds had been almost totally ploughed away but their surrounding ditches appeared as ghostly outlines on the aerial photographs. A small, but growing, number of barrow cemeteries has been identified in Scotland but only a few excavated. Aerial photographs show the remains of at least 28 square and round barrows at Tarradale making it currently the second largest burial ground of this type in Scotland. The site could originally have been more extensive as parts of it have either been ploughed out or are too deeply buried to show in aerial photographs. Recent high-resolution photographs taken by drone have suggested the existence of more barrows towards the perimeter of the field and possibly into an adjacent field. Our excavations showed that Tarradale was a barrow cemetery of monumental proportions and potentially one of the most important in Scotland.

Although we are still waiting for radiocarbon dates from the Tarradale excavation, the presence of round and square barrows and their spacing and distribution leaves little doubt that we are dealing with a Pictish cemetery potentially from the 5th or 6th century AD, an important period in the formation of early kingdoms in northern Britain. Tarradale lies in the eastern side of Ross-shire on the Beauly Firth and only six miles from Craig Phadrig, an important stronghold and regional capital in the Kingdom of Fortriu. Part of this centralisation of power was reflected in the creation of monumental cemeteries and Tarradale may have been the burial place of the local elite. No Pictish symbol stones have been found at Tarradale, although symbol stones, including cross slabs with symbols on them have been found in adjacent parishes, the nearest being the recently discovered Conan stone three miles from Tarradale. However, in the same field as the barrow cemetery, a fortified settlement was excavated in the 1990’s; no primary dating evidence for the Picts was obtained but on stylistic grounds pottery from the fortified site has been dated to between AD 300-800 so this may well be the settlement focus of some of the people buried nearby.

Plan of barrow cemetery trenches (plan by Steve Birch)

Circles on the Photographs – Cataloguing the J S Bone Collection of Aerial Photography

by Jonathan Wordsworth

As part of the cataloguing the JSBone aerial photographs (see earlier blog post) donated to North of Scotland Archaeological Society, a team of NoSAS members have been identifying the sites revealed on these images.  Occasionally some intriguing queries arise. One such site came up recently and was from a photograph taken near Braelangwell on the Black Isle.  Here on an image from 2012, a series of small circular mounds were revealed.  Initial thoughts were that these might be the remains of an unknown barrow cemetery similar to that excavated at Tarradale.  While the density and similar size of the circles did cause some scepticism on their origin, searching on earlier Google Earth satellite views showed similar features were visible at least as far back as 2004.

JSBone P100014  Centred at NH68652 64114 and taken on the 14th January 2012. The low mounds highlighted by the winter sunlight are glacial moraines but in the field below are an intriguing set of circular and possibly square barrows.

Andy Hickie of Avoch Heritage was sufficiently intrigued by these, as he had previously identified a site of interest nearby the year before, that he agreed to fly his drone over these features, before processing to enhance the images through RTF software.  His results can be seen below.

Images processed by Andy Hickie from his drone photographs and which he describes as ‘photogrammerty-derived false colour images’.

Droning on about Tarradale

by Andy Hickie

Drone image of Tarradale Through Time barrow cemetery dig, as featured in “Current Archaeology” November 2019.

Back in 2017, I caved in to the demands of consumerism, and purchased a new quadcopter, a Phantom 3 Advanced, which is equipped with a camera and GPS unit. I flew multiple flights around Avoch but, after a while, the novelty of seeing one’s house from the air at different angles and altitudes begins to wear thin, and I began to wonder what I could actually do with a drone. Having always had an interest in archaeology and, spurred on by seeing some of the images Alan Thompson of NOSAS had created, I decided to carry out a few experiments of my own.

My first flights took in locations such as the distillery and settlement at Mulchaich, and the features of Kinbeachie castle – sites which had already been mapped by Alan by drone, the results of which I could use as a ‘benchmark’ against which I could compare those of my own.

At the same time, I began experimenting with various flight planning apps which allow for off-line autonomous flight planning, as well as online platforms for image processing. I found that “DroneDeploy” and “Mapsmadeasy” combined provided a fairly user-friendly pipeline, whereby image capture and photogrammetry can produce georeferenced photomosaics and digital surface models (DSMs). These can then be imported into software such as QGIS for further processing.

Having found the software which satisfied my needs, I then turned my attention to potential sites which I could map – and decided on the cropmarks of the Barrow Cemetery at Tarradale. At this point, my intent was purely to satisfy my own curiosity – just to see what I could see, and how it would compare with the archaeology found at the forthcoming 2019 dig.

And so, on 10 June 2018, accompanied by my daughter Emma to act as co-pilot and “spotter”, I visisted Tarradale to map the area with the drone. I can still recall the excitement I felt as the images began to appear on the monitor of the remote controller, which showed the cropmarks were developing. However, my satisfaction was tempered somewhat when I got home and began to process the photographs. Although the cropmarks were indeed evolving, the crop was insufficiently ripe, and many of the details remained hidden (see image below).

A Year of Highland Archaeology

by James McComas (NOSAS)

A Year of Highland Archaeology book cover, showing Tarradale Through Time excavation trench with the settings of a possible stone hut. The same trench yielded several rare antler tools.

NOSAS has just published A Year of Highland Archaeology: A Collection of the Projects and Activities of the North of Scotland Archaeological Society . This new book includes 10 articles which explore some of the diverse recent projects that we has been involved with. These range from large scale funded excavations through to group surveys and small scale research projects. They highlight Highland locations from the west to the east coast, from Speyside to Sutherland.

Projects featured include the lottery funded Tarradale Through Time Project, which in 2017 saw 6000 year old antler tools uncovered near Muir of Ord on the Black Isle.  These very rare finds included the remains of a harpoon point and two “T axes” left behind by hunter gatherers on the shores of the Beauly Firth. The T axes are two of only five examples so far known in the whole of Scotland. The trench where these were found also tantalisingly revealed the possible stone setting of a Mesolithic hut. Tarradale Through Time continues in Autumn 2019 with the excavation of potentially one of the largest barrow cemeteries in Scotland (further information at www.tarradalethroughtime.co.uk).

One of rare antler “T axes” found during Tarradale Through Time’s 2017 excavations.

Another chapter focuses on Torvean Hillfort, a neglected structure on the edge of Inverness. Torvean was perhaps constructed more than 2000 years ago, but it is today sadly under threat from persistent trail bike damage. A different chapter tells the much more positive story of how a collection of 400 historic maps relating to the Lovat Highland Estates, covering extensive areas west of Inverness, have now been scanned and made available online.

Map of Torvean Hillfort, Inverness showing destructive trail bike tracks

A different chapter still focuses on the NOSAS’s work with Scotland’s Rock Art Project. ScRAP aims to log as many as possible of the mysterious carved “cup marks” which appear on Scotland’s boulders and rock faces over a 5 year project. The precise date of these carvings, of which there are many good examples in the Highlands, is unknown but they are thought to have been mainly created in the Neolithic period around 6,000 to 4,000 years ago. Other archaeological locations explored in the book include Ormond Castle in Avoch, a prehistoric roundhouse landscape in Glen Urquhart, and Gruinard Island in Wester Ross.

3D Photogrammetry model of cup marked stone at Kinmylies, Inverness

Tarradale Through Time: 2018 Excavations

by Eric Grant

In September 2018 two sites were investigated by TARRADALE THROUGH TIME near Muir of Ord. These were a fortified enclosure just west of Gilchrist church and a rather enigmatic and possibly ritual site south of Gilchrist church, but located on Balvattie Farm.

Gilchrist Promontory Fort

The Gilchrist fort is a rather unusual monument  and walking past it gives no clue to its existence, size or age. Canmore describes it as a promontory fort based on their interpretation of crop marks as the arcs of three concentric ditches “Apparently designed to cut off approach to a tongue of low-lying and comparatively level ground running NW into marshland, they are in effect part of the defensive system of a promontory fort measuring about 85 m by 30 m”.

In addition to the black-and-white photographs on the Canmore database, the late Jim bone, who was an enthusiastic archaeologist and also a pilot, took some good colour photographs of the site. Jim’s aerial photograph shows three dark green curved features representing the fort’s ditches on the east side of the promontory. The ditches are now under cultivation and have been filled in and ploughed flat so there is nothing to see above ground; it is only the aerial photographs that have encouraged archaeologists to see this as a fortified promontory. It is unusual to find a promontory fort inland unless it is in a situation like this where it is surrounded by water or marshland. Most hill and promontory forts in Scotland appear to have been constructed during the late Bronze Age and Iron Age and the latest ones were built or reoccupied in Pictish times.

Aerial photograph of Gilchrist showing ditches as dark green curves (JS Bone Collection)

Our research agenda sought to identify and characterise the ditches, and to ascertain when the fort was constructed, how long it was occupied and what activities may have taken place there. Three large trenches were initially opened, one running at right angles across the defensive ditches, a second running from the long side of the fort down into the bog and a third on the highest part of the interior of the fort. We were very quickly able to establish that the three ditches seen on aerial photographs did exist, with a hint of a fourth ditch closer into the fort. The outermost ditch was reasonably shallow but the second ditch was a massive construction 5-6 m wide at the top and sloping steeply to about 1.5 m below the plough soil though we consider that the upper part of the ditches have been lost due to ploughing and the intervening banks of excavated material flattened. The third innermost ditch was not quite so deep, but right on the edge of the actual fort area we found what may be an inner ditch that might have continued round the fort perimeter as a wall and perhaps with a timber fence palisade on top or just in front.

Plan of Gilchrist excavations showing crop marks and trenches (HAS)

Torvean Hillfort, Inverness: Managing a Forgotten Site

by Jonathan Wordsworth

Lying less than 2 kilometres from the centre of Inverness, Torvean Hillfort  is a much neglected Scheduled Monument (SM3806 –see also Highland Council MHG3749) of national importance, situated on the edge of the former Torvean Quarry and currently obscured by mature woodland, scrub and rough vegetation.  It is also suffering from persistent trail bike damage that is continuing to cause erosion to the fabric of the monument.

As shown in the 2017 Atlas of Hillforts, this orange spot marks site of Torvean Fort ©Bing (Note the image taken in 2015 also shows the AOC trial trenches for the new Kilvean Golf Course.)

Located at NH 6437 4315, the fort is situated on one of a series of periglacial ridges that are considered nationally important, forming part of the extensive Torvean Landforms SSSI 1557.  In the JNCC statement  for the site it is described as follows:

Torvean is notable for glacial geomorphology, containing an outstanding range of landforms and deposits formed by the meltwaters of the last (Late Devensian) ice-sheet, between approximately 14,000 and 13,000 years ago……… it contains what is believed to be the highest esker in Britain, with a height of over 68 m.

The area immediately to the east of the fort has been extensively quarried for sand and gravel and though this quarry closed in 1989, the morphology of the area has been severely altered. The quarry lies outside the immediate environs of the fort, but the excavations and dumps from these works have affected the situation of this monument.

Unlike Craig Phadrig to the north which has been long recorded, Torvean Fort was not shown on the earliest maps of the area, such as Bastide’s 1725 or Roy’s Military Survey of c1750, where it is shown as an undifferentiated treeless ridge to the west of Tomnahurich.

©NLS. Detail from Bastide’s A General Survey of Inverness and country adjoining to the foot of Loch Ness 1725.

This continued ignorance of Torvean is continued in a fine series of later maps held in the National Archives Scotland concerning a long standing dispute relating to the rights to catch salmon in the River Ness.  Dating from 1765 onwards these continue to show Torvean as a single ridge and the best of these, John Home’s plan of 1774, showed the ridge as now obscured by a plantation of trees. The ridge and fort have been largely wooded ever since. The Home map is also important for showing the Cairn at Kilvain (Torvean) later destroyed during the construction of the Caledonian Canal and where an important and substantial Pictish silver chain was recovered in 1808.  It was recorded in the Old Statistical Account for Inverness and Bona Parish in 1791 that

There is a very large cairn near the river at the foot of a hill called Torvean. It some years ago was partly removed, a coffin was found composed of six thick flags.

Jim Bone: Aerial Photography of Archaeological Sites

Jim was a founder member of NOSAS, which celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2018. He was known in the Highlands for providing important aerial photos of numerous archaeological sites over many years. Sadly, Jim died on June 16^th, after a long and wearisome illness. His extensive collection of aerial photographs has been gifted to NOSAS and will form the JS Bone Collection, in his memory. This is the story he wrote of himself, in the months before he died. (Introduction revised Sep 2018).

Aerial photograph of Mulchaich, Ross-shire. The settlement , distillery and chambered cairn at Mulchaich were the subject of NOSAS projects between 2009 and 2013. See the blog post.

It appears to me that people can be divided into two categories – those who love flying, and those who do not.  Brought up in close proximity to Prestwick Airport, I recall watching aircraft there, and determined that I would one day find out more about aviation.  Inspired by a selection of Biggles books, I joined the local ATC (Air Training Corps) squadron, enabling me to sample flight for the first time in 1950 in an elderly Anson.  Military aircraft have a distinctive odour of aluminium and oil, complemented in this case by an off-putting whiff of vomit, but I enjoyed this first ‘air experience’ flight along the Ayrshire coast.  For the next flight, I borrowed a folding camera, and tried a few shots through the rather scratched Perspex window.  Surprisingly, the results came out quite clearly, and another interest was born.

Going to University in Glasgow, I lost no time in finding the HQ of the University Air Squadron (GUAS), and was fortunate enough to be accepted as a Cadet Pilot in the RAFVR.  This offered a high standard of flying training, during 1953-7, provided by experienced RAF instructors at Scone Airfield outside Perth.  Our Chipmunk aircraft was state of the art at that time, but cameras were not encouraged on training sorties.  At the end of my four years, I asked if I could take a camera with me on a dual flight with my instructor, having noticed some archaeological sites which I wanted to photograph.  By opening the hood, I was able to take quite a good shot of a hill fort to the south of Perth, which presaged further attempts in later years.  The Squadron experience qualified me for a Preliminary Flying Badge – a sort of junior wings – and allowed me to apply for a Private Pilot’s Licence, costing a very reasonable ten shillings, when I left the unit.

Rhynie Excavations Season 4 (2016)

By Cathy MacIver (on behalf of the REAP Project Team)

A fourth season of excavation took place at the Craw Stane, Rhynie over August – September 2016. The project was led by REAP Project Directors Dr Gordon Noble, University of Aberdeen and Dr Meggen Gondek, University of Chester.

Aerial photographs and geophysical surveys had identified curvilinear enclosures around the Craw Stane, one of the few symbol stones remaining in situ in Scotland (Plate 1).

Plate 1: Craw Stane with Tap O ‘Noth hillfort (©Cathy MacIver)

Previous seasons of work at the Craw Stane (one of seven Class I Pictish symbol stones from the area) in 2011, 2012 and 2015 had demonstrated that these enclosures took the form of an inner and outer ditch and a later palisade structure with associated postholes.

Excavations in past seasons had revealed a number of high status objects including fragments of Late Roman Amphora, glass beads, metal pins, glass vessel fragments and evidence of metal working in the form of metal working tongs, slag (metal working waste) and clay moulds for metal objects. The features date the site to the early medieval period and radiocarbon dates from the ditches and other internal features confirmed a relatively short 5^th-6^th C construction, occupation and abandonment of the site.

Plate 2: Rough draft of the excavations from 2011, 2012 and 2015. A work in progress!

The 2016 excavations aimed to investigate areas of the site that hadn’t been looked at before, continuing to use the successful strip and map approach employed in previous years. This involved 4 large areas or trenches (Plate 3) where the topsoil was removed by machine and watched by archaeologists. The areas were then cleaned by hand by a team of archaeologists, students and volunteers, using hoes, krafses and eventually trowels. This made archaeological features more visible and easier to record. Plans of the site were created using DGPS (accurate to the nearest cm) and aerial photography using a drone. Areas with more complexity were drawn by hand.

Plate 3: Aerial view of the 2016 trenches