Well, after two days of typing lists there seems to be nothing left for me to type. I've typed the context, small finds and sample registers. I've just finished writing an entry for the SMR on the lime kilns on site and am about to help with the Harris matrix while listening to Rush. The highlight so far has been my introduction to the seminal comedy Whoops Apocalypse last night.

Post-ex, that usually means lists, everywhere in the early stages.
Currently we are typing up the list of all the drawings (and check that they are all there), then the lists of contexts (or for the US reader the locus list), and check that all the relevant information is also on the context sheet.

The most interesting thing today was to sort through the photographs and pick some for the blog, which is now illustrated - and spell checked - apparently blogging at the end of a hot day is the end of the English language as we know it....SO it should now all be fixed

For the next few days, one of the excavators will be joining us for the post-ex work. Grant has been helping for a couple of years now, and this should be a great help

The other director spent the last couple of days flying over Perthshire (and drifting into Stirlingshire) for our annual aerial archaeology study.

One of the digital photographs that was returned, shows the large round feature behind the farm building to be distinctly oval, which would fit, an interpretation as a dun or as a possible early Christian church site.

After three days of more washing up, laundry and tool cleaning, the post-ex is finally getting to the phase where the paper work is reassembled and the lists are all prepared.

As part of our permit to work on Bochastle, Historic Scotland wants within three months a 'Data Structure Report'. Which is an acount of what was found, and in what order these feature followed each other, and what paperwork, photos, finds, samples etc were made.

So for the next week, we will be sorting the material and give you updates on any interesting new discoveries.

It seems the post-ex starts early this year. This morning the geophysics team arrived with the preliminary results of their combined data. This suggests that we have re-entrant gates (gates that swing back markedly into the inside of the fort and create a funnel in front of the entrance to the fort), while on the inside we appear to have a principia and corridor building, a possible courtyard building, as well as several bits of potential barracks. They don't want us to put the picture on the web yet, as more work is apparently still needed to make it beautiful.

Their summary of the fort exterior shows, so far, only one round feature in the west entrance, which must either pre- or postdate the fort, this suggests that Bochastle is one of the very few forts, which we have surveyed that have failed to produce any traces of settlement immediately outside the fort. However, this leaves the question of when the large round feature behind the farm was built. If it was an Iron Age Dun, it might suggests, that the civilians possibly settled there, rather than at the fort proper - but, again this is early days and only further research is likely to solve that question.

Ok, Saturday the last - :-))

Time to put it all back the way it was, which can be really backbreaking when done by hand, but this year we had a real artist with a JCB, who put most of the soil back for us. 'all' we needed to do is to put the turf back on top and scrape the last remaining soil off the rest of the site.

Ok, and make sure that the records are all complete and that we hadn't missed anyrthing and pick up all the markers of the survey. Four marker in every corner of a 30 x 30 m grid, that is a lot of wood to find and pick up, especially as the resident sheep have decided that they are great toys that are there to be rubbed against and then dragged across the site.

The geophysicists are still working on their results, they are currently downloading the last of the grids and promise us a nice combined results grid for tomorrow. We will see.

While most of us are looking forward to getting back home to where there are warm beds and less excessive levels of midge bites. The work of the dig will continue.


The next phase will be the so-called 'post-ex'. This includes a very boring part, which involves the checking and tidying of all the dig equipment (plenty of washing and scouring), and after that the preparation of the 'Data Structure Report', where lists are made of all the drawings, finds, samples, contexts and a preliminary report of the sequence is compiled... so there may be more updates in the weeks to come.

The last day of real work on site, and as usual we started with a small panic attack, when we realized just how much there still is to do and then work until all of it is done.

So what is happening: The goephysices team are now working to the east of the fort, hoping in the last remaining side of the fort for some evidence of the civilian settlement around the fort that still eludes us.

Trench 2 spent most of the day drawing and contexting the various ditches that they have found in their trench.

It is traditional on the last day, to change the story, and things are certainly true to form in Trench 2: when we talked yesterday of the possibility of a furnace dug into the middle ditch, we were wrong.
When both sides of the section were cleaned today, it was suddenly clear that there were two furnaces apparently sharing the same working pit within the ditch.

The sense of their position half way up the hill was suddenly also apparent, as both furnace appear to face into a steady, but not too strong wind that appears to be blowing from Strathgartney and Loch Vennachar towards Bochastle. Because of the intervening hills, this wind doesn't reach the valley bottom, but would have been a great help with working metal half way up the slope.


Half way to euphoria the dampener had to come, when it turned out that the third ditch had still not been bottomed and thus had to be taken further down. It now seems that the sequence of V-shaped ditches discovered yesterday was actually pre-dated by a flat bottomed ditch, which suggests a prehistoric date (e.g. Bronze Age). The ditch is still a fair bit from the hill fort of Dunmore and thus at the moment it is not clear whether it might represent an outer ditch (no bank is visible anywhere), or whether it is an independent structure.


Trench 1 at the same time was still trying to clarify the sequence of events within the trench.

The second level of occupation that was revealed by removing several of the overlying contexts (which produced more evidence of metal working)and was shown to be an area of slight charcoal flecks that concentrated around a dismantled furnace with the remains of furnace lining, large lumps of charcoal and a piece of an iron pig that had been taken from the furnace and then dumped.



The second feature that was tentatively identified from the section was, after the recording of the upper level, also explored in plan, but turned out to be little more than a lens of more orange sand underneath the rest of the site.


A small section cut elsewhere showed that at least the re-cut of the V-shaped (Roman) ditch was later than the large band of silty loam that produced the 'annexe' traces. Thereby suggesting that that feature must predate the ditch re-cut, if not the ditch itself.

Finally we managed to record a long section through the 'annexe ditch' itself, which was a beautiful example of an old river channel, with very fine particles in the centre of the channel, followed by coarser material towards the banks, which consisted of river pebbles. So it is definite, no annexe, just an old river arm. Mission accomplished.

As to the age of the metalworking debris? Well the current theory is that it is likely to be early modern, but before the onset of the Industrial revolution, which would have made this type of extraction less economically attractive. Visitors from the Callander Historical Society refered to unspecified evidence for ore extraction around Callander until the early 19th century, but whether that refers to our material remains to be seen in the post-excavation work.

Well, as everybody else has done their bit, so it was my turn today and I spent the entire day as a 'tape and meter monkey' to the geophysics team.

What can I say, my predecessor yesterday described it as possibly the 'worst job in history', which is wrong. Has to be...

Collecting data is fun, you spend the day walking up and down the field ensuring that measurements are taken correctly every meter and every correct measurement is rewarded by the machine with a little friendly 'binglybinglybing' sound, showing that you are part of something big, sophisticated and technologically challenging. As we are working in teams of two, you can spend the day catching up on essential gossip with/about your friend(s), and in the evening you can compare notes on why your feet are hurting and why your legs and back are complaining....

Well, and then somebody adds a very cloudy day and a small amount of rain in mid afternoon, which was very welcome, until it starts running down the inside of your waterproofs. :-)). Still, we were complaining about the hot weather, so we got what we asked for.

What we didn't ask for was the cloud of midges that rose into the air immediately after the rain and fell upon us with intent and a vengeance - so back into the waterproofs and keep mouth firmly shut and start slapping furiously into your own face, to keep the midge bites in your face to below 50.... Suddenly the smokers are a lot more popular.

- I love geophysics - Honestly, I do - well, a bit....- especially the data processing at the computer in closed rooms. :-))

As a result of all this, what happened in the other trenches is a bit hazy for me, but the following comes from the site book.


Trench 1 continued with their feature exploration, which finally produced a ploughscar, so we have some evidence for the agricultural activity on the site.

Much more importantly the two furnace features were further explored, which makes the northern one look like a very nicely preserved example, while the second one is now looking more doubtful.

In addition thanks to the differential drying explained a couple of days ago, the ditch is is now visible as running through the entire length of the trench from north to south, and interupts the 'not-annexe'(and is thus later than whatever was coming in from the east). West of the ditch, another shallow flat-bottomed feature was discovered which is later than the pit with the 18/19th century pottery and which has a fairly thick ashy deposit at the bottom of it, suggesting that it too might be associated with the metalworking.


Trench 2 is producing a very similar ashy stripe at the bottom of their 'ditch 3', making it highly unlikely that this is a natural feature. In addition, it seems that their second ditch, which may have been re-cut, was later on re-used for one (perhaps two) metal working furnaces, which were dug into it.


Apart from that there are a number of geological features there, as well as the possible base of a field wall, which again might need counterchecking with the estate records.

The geophysics team have now got a picture of the eastern fort defences, which show a re-entrant gate similar to the surviving one on the West side.


And finally after all the complaining etc., most of us went after work to the Roman fort of Ardoch, which was fantastic (and largely midge-free). Personally, I think it is the most athmospheric and impressive turf and timber Roman fort in Britain, and perhaps Northwestern Europe. The ditches and banks are clearly visible and perhaps because it has not been developed for tourism, nothing spoils the fantastic views, and frequently we are the only people there. Which is just fine....

Well, the time had to come and today it did. If you are excavating in Scotland you very quickly learn an important difference between scheduled and un-scheduled sites. Unscheduled sites are mostly new discoveries and you may work on them, provided you know what you are doing, to clarify what they are.

Scheduled sites are those sites that are of considerable archaeological significance and in short, if you want to do any work there, you need Historic Scotland's permission in advance and usually they come and check at some point during the work, to ensure that you do what you promised to do and are keeping within the limits of your permit.

Well our visit was today and the inspector from Historic Scotland came and brought Lorna Main, the archaeologist for Stirlingshire - and they were very nice and satisfied with what we are doing - so, thank you.

As to what was achieved today: Apparently the temperatures have reached some sort of Nationwide record, but we stopped counting and having identified a shady spot under the trees, enjoyed the 'coolness' of the lunchbreak or,in the case of Tench 2, the cricket commentary under their very flashy umbrellas. Also, finally, all obstacles were overcome and we had ice-cream for lunch!!! .

The big news is from the geophysics team, having identified the NW corner of the fort a couple of days back, they provided this morning the visual evidence of the SW-corner south of the railway embankment, whose outer edge was only just not destroyed by the railway embankment (now a footpath). In addition, we have a clearer image of the camp ditch approaching the corner and then stopping.

Now what does this mean? There was a fair amount of discussion about this, with one side arguing that it means that the fort pre-dates the camp, as the camp builders got as close as they could and then just stopped, while the other side argues the exact opposite, that the camp was earlier and that the fort obliterated the camp ditch by digging straight through its ditch and depositing the upcast on top of it, thereby creating the break visible in the geophysical image.

Both scenarios might work, but the really good news is that the survey clearly shows that there is enough of the fort corner surviving to solve this question once and for all - not this year (but that doesn't mean, we might not want to come back).

As to the excavations, Trench 1 continued with their exploration of the features discovered so far. A number of the smaller ones proved to be small lenses of topsoil or sandy inclusions.

A large feature to the west of the camp ditch, lovingly called 'the cow pit' because of its size, turned out to be a shallow feature that cut the Roman ditch and is thus later, the 18/19th century pottery from the feature is the first datable find from trench 1.

A line of yellowish spots in the NE part of the trench was also sectioned, but instead of the distinctive shape of the expected ploughscar it appears to be much deeper and might actually be the remains of a hedgerow, though confirmation from old estate maps is sorely needed to proof this theory.

A long section across the east side of the trench to verify if the annexe ditch really is a river bed, looked very promising in its southern part,which produced large bands of river sand and silt.
Further to the north, very orange deposits with the remains of metalworking were discovered, which may be the remains of furnaces. The section was therefore stopped, to record these features in more detail.

The large camp ditch section is now drawn with all its small lenses and gravel inclusions, and seems to have taken most of a day.

Trench 2 also progressed with their sections, the easternmost of which is now at the recording stage, showing a distinct recut.

The second ditch is still being cleaned, while the third 'ditch feature' from the aerial photographs and survey is still being elusive, despite an exploratory section in the area of the geophysical anomaly which is still underway, which just produces soft orange gravel. However, the softness of the fill, may suggest that this represents re-deposited material rather than natural deposits, so further work is still required.

At the far end of the trench the fourth anomaly has however been disproved as geology