Salisbury Crags Rampart, Week 1
Our first week of the Holyrood Field School was split between training and beginning our excavation on the Salisbury Crags. On Monday we were given a tour of the archaeology of the park and where previous excavations had taken place. This allowed us to…
Holyrood Dig Blog 2025
Each summer, students from the University of Edinburgh take part in the Holyrood Fieldwork Project, an excavation on the slopes of Arthur’s Seat in Holyrood Park. The project gives students hands-on experience of archaeological fieldwork while exploring one of Scotland’s most iconic landscapes. This year’s…
Out of time in Trench 9 – The Final Week
by Ben Bright, William Taylor, Lana Crocher Trench number: 9 On the first day of our last week, we began creating a sondage on the southwest side of the trench within the roundhouse. The aim here was to explore the possibility of a later…
Final week in Trench 12
By Fenn Woodhouse Our aim this week was to define the suspected roundhouse wall further and investigate the structure of the rampart by removing as much rubble as possible before starting to fill the trench back in at the close of the project. At the…
Second week view from Trench 11
By Qianyue Zhou The Background and Objectives of the Project The Crow Hill Archaeological Excavation Project at Holyrood Park aimed to discover that the area had been used as a settlement and to explore the relationship between this potential building and the surrounding agricultural terraces….
Week two in Trench 9
Ben Bright, Eve Jeffreys, Charlie Doogan, Freya Sinclair-Brown, Charlie Thom Trench number: 9 The aim of the second week was to remove the rubble from the interior of the iron age round house to expose the floor surface as well as the interior face of…
Week one in Trench 9
Ben Bright, Clara Moore, Ben Moore, Sofia D’Onghia, Emily Rutter The aim for this week was to lay-out and de-turf two trenches in what is thought to be a ‘scoped settlement on the northern side of Dunsapie Hill. On the first day a large square…
First week thoughts from Trench 11
Cara Henderson I have just completed the first week of the Holyrood park field school and here’s an insight into why we are excavating here, what we have completed in the first week and what skills I have learned so far. We know that there…
Holyrood Archaeology 2023 – Day 13
Today we had another busy day on Dunsapie, with many of the trenches finishing for the season and hosting our final Open Day. It was great to show the public the progress of our trenches, and share our season finds – over our two open…
Holyrood Archaeology 2023 – Day 12
We’re getting close to the end of the 2023 season, and the students are hard at work finishing the final tasks and aims of their trenches. For some, this included cleaning and taking final photos and photogrammetry, whilst others continue to expose sections of rampart….