Cnoc Tigh and Tarlogie Dun Excavations (Iron Age Round Houses)

by David Findlay (NOSAS)

These excavations, in April and July 2014, were led by Candy Hatherley and form part of the University of Aberdeen Northern Picts Project. Cnoc Tigh (see also our earlier blog entry) and Tarlogie Dun are Iron Age round houses situated on the north coast of the Tarbat Peninsula in Easter Ross. They are both on the high ground about 200m back from the coast giving them spectacular views across the Dornoch Firth to Sutherland and up the Sutherland coast. Neither site is naturally defensive and, though both have watercourses to one side creating a gorge and a steep bank to the sea on another side, that still leaves two sides open to the surrounding countryside.

The NOSAS team at Tarlogie, looking N (David Findlay)

They differ from the three duns excavated by the Aberdeen University Team in 2013 in that these were all on the south side of the Tarbat Peninsular and were relatively defensible due to the natural features, although Tarrel is overlooked by the cliff on the landward side.

Both Cnoc Tigh and Tarlogie appear to date from about 400 BC with occupation at Tarlogie lasting for 800 years to about 400AD. I do not know of any dates yet for the latest occupancy at Cnoc Tigh although I understand that suitable charcoal samples have been taken for dating.

The 2014 excavations at both sites reveal severely robbed and damaged stone walls; there are discernible facing walls in a few locations but largely only the fill remains. Both sites show a lot of evidence of the structures changing with time.

Excavations on the Tarbat Peninsula: Cnoc Tigh (Iron Age Round House)

by Oskar Sveinbjarnason (University of Aberdeen)

The excavation started as planned on the 22nd June. A 15m long trench and 10m wide was opened over the northern part of the dun. It took 2 days to open up the area (gorse removal and grass) and as the surrounding field was under crop, a JCB was not able to access the site and speed up the opening. It soon became apparent that the site has been largely robbed of stones, likely during the 19th – 20th Century, possibly to make the enclosure which sits on top of the dun. The quarry holes can still be seen. It was a hard task to plan and remove this later enclosure, mainly due to the amount of rubble and the fact that the enclosure was little more than tossed up earth and stone bank (we can firmly assume that this is not the Castle Corbet) and blended in with the dun itself.

Picture showing the surviving outer dun wall. The rubble to the left is a collapse which hid this outer wall face.

In the trench the outer dun wall face was harder to find than we expected and is it due to the large amount of collapse from the dun wall core outwards and collapse from the enclosure on top of it as well. It was towards the end of week 2 when we finally figured out where the outer dun wall was located and which made the site nicer and easier to understand.

The dun wall turned out to be a complex construction with multiple stages of construction now visible. Initially it seems to have started out as a round house with about 1.5m thick wall. Up against this wall, additional 2.5m of extra wall was added, making the wall about 4m thick.