Day 1: The Root(s) of all Evil

The first day of excavation at King’s Seat marks the start of a three year season of excavation, each September from 2017-2019.

Today, the team navigated their way up the winding slopes to our base for the next two weeks, with tents, tools and (most importantly) Tunnocks in tow. Arriving at the summit, it was clear how much of an impact the rhododendron previously covering the site would have had on access and visibility at the hillfort. The efforts of the volunteers who initiated and completed the vegetation clearance made it possible to identify all of the interesting lumps and bumps of this monument, which hopefully will understand even more about by the end of this two weeks.

After a site tour by Sarah at PKHT, and a health and safety talk by Andy from AOC, we laid out the three trenches which will be excavated this year. Trench 2 is at the summit, encompassing a rather impressive glacial erratic boulder, Trench 3 focuses on the entrance of the hillfort, and Trench 1 focuses on the terraces and ramparts cascading down from the lower terrace area. Many of these terraces may have been later activity, as a result of landscaping and manipulation of the terrain, and we hope to establish a good chronology for this over the course of the project.

The morning began with a Tunnock’s fuelled deturfing frenzy. Although, as there isn’t really much in the way of ‘turf’, the team opted for mattocks, saws and loppers to clear the fallen vegetation, matted roots and root stumps left by the rhododendron. Part of this excavation aims to assess the impact of these plants on the underlying archaeology, yet they did not impact our progress today! We made fantastic progress, clearing a lot of the trench area by lunchtime, and even coming down onto stone and possible features in Trench 2.

Topographical Survey Workshop August 2017

Trowels Ready for King’s Seat

Welcome to the King’s Seat Community Archaeology Project Blog. Here you can read the latest news from the project including our excavation dig diary which will be coming very soon as it’s only 7 days now until we start our first season of excavations on the hillfort.

Preparations for the dig have been stepping up apace this week at PKHT and also on site with tree and lower lying vegetation clearance taking place to prepare the areas where the trenches will be going in. We have 5 trenches planned which we hope to open over the duration of the project and this year we’ll be starting with Trenches 1-3.