Today was a cold day on site, and we had to take shelter in the site cabin at several points to hide from the rain. Despite this, the students worked hard in the wet conditions, and were still able to make great progress in each of their trenches.

Cat’s Experience:

Today marked day nine of the Dunsapie Hillfort excavations in Holyrood Park. Everyone arrived ready for a day of hard work, with the sun shining and the potential for an exciting day of finds. However, after a few hours of work the weather, in classic Scottish fashion, took a turn for the worst and torrential rain began to pour down. 

Despite the adverse weather conditions causing slight flooding of trenches, there were some amazing finds. Trench one continued to clear and define the rampart walls, beginning to produce some section drawings, which takes a fair amount of patience to complete. Trench two and seven carried on with clearing the stones found, allowing them to understand more about how and when the fort was used, with a potential quartz deposit being found in trench seven. Trench four had interesting finds with a fragment of skull being found, yet to be identified. The most interesting find was a piece of bone with a pinhole through it, which is hollow through. We are wondering whether this may have been a flute, or a toggle. And finally trench eight kept going with defining and clearing their context layers, they also began work on a sondage to allow for better understanding of the site without having to clear the whole trench. 

Although the weather today did not allow for the best excavation conditions, we all powered through for as long as it was safe to do so and had a relatively successful day. Hopefully tomorrow will be even more successful! 

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