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Excavations at Castlelaw, Midlothian, and the Small Forts of North Britain
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 January 2012
Extract
The fort at Castlelaw is one of a group of four, strung out along a front of five miles on the south-eastern slopes of the Pentlands. Like the rest, it does not occupy the summit of the hill (which is just under 1,600 ft. in height) but is built some 990 ft. above sea-level on an elevated spur projecting from the main mass which rises steeply above the fort, just out of bowshot. The spur ends in a slight knoll the oval summit of which is 93 yds. long by 40 yds. wide. This area is enclosed within a very low Inner Bank, while a more conspicuous rampart, Middle Bank, supplemented on the north only by an Outer Bank, impeded progress up the slope. Two rock-cut fosses, superficially invisible, were revealed between the ramparts by excavations carried out during 1931 and 1932. A detailed report of these operations will be published elsewhere, but the results which concern Britain on both sides of the Border may be summarized here.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1933
References
page 1 note 1 ‘Boulders’ is used to denote stones, foreign to the hill, which is composed of trachyte, quite useless for building purposes. The majority must have been brought up from the valley.
page 2 note 1 See note on previous page.
page 2 note 2 Antiq. Journ. xi, 82.
page 4 note 1 Sussex Arch. Cols. lxxxii, 120 and pl. v.
page 4 note 2 Ibid. p. 128.
page 8 note 1 Cf., e.g., Der obergermanisch-raetische Limes, L. 32, Zugmantel, pl. x and fig. 6, 6 (from cellar 208 which yielded coins ranging from Domitian to Commodus), and Riegl, Spätrömische Kunst in Oesterreich-Ungarn, p. 141. I owe these references to Mr. E. T. Leeds. For Britain see Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot. l, 112 (Traprain, lowest level); Arch. Ael. 3, xxi, pl. ix (Housesteads); and Arch. Camb. lxxvii, 84, fig. 33, 30 (Caerleon).
page 8 note 1 Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot. lii, 275. Note that second-century pottery was found in five earth-houses in Angus (Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot. lxvi, 386), but that at Crichton almost in sight of Castlelaw was partly built with stones plundered from some deserted Roman station.
page 8 note 3 Cf. Collingwood in Cumb. West. Trans. 2, xxiv, 85.
page 9 note 1 For Scotland these figures are based on Christison, for Northumberland on Proc. Soc. Ant. Newcastle, 1923–4, p. 82. Both enumerations are incomplete—Christison even omits Traprain Law—and include works of a different character. The Royal Commission's Inventories of Monuments in the Counties of Berwick, Dumfries, Haddington, and Midlothian supply correctives as far as they go. Brochs have been omitted as an obviously, intrusive type.
page 10 note 1 Ogilvie in Great Britain: Essays in Regional Geography, p. 435.
page 10 note 2 Ibid. p. 484.
page 11 note 1 Arch. Aeliana, vii (1876), 3 ff.Google Scholar
page 11 note 2 Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot. lxiv, 325; Mr. P. Kennedy kindly drew my attention to the importance of this site.
page 12 note 1 Proc. Soc. Ant. Newcastle, loc. cit.