Broubster. Pronounced Broobster!
The troops assembled at Broubster today with two planes tables and Michelle (AOC’s GPS) because that is all they needed to record five hut circles, three field boundaries, two quarries and eighteen clearance cairns! AOC’s Jamie got volunteers Paul and Carol underway surveying one hut circle using a plane-table, while Winnie and Susan started soon […]
BOG post of the week
A great first day of fieldwork over at Shebster today with six volunteers recording five hut circles! The morning seemed a bit gloomy with our drive to site overwhelmed by rain, a new electric fence for us to battle and a team of midges attacking us. However, by the time we’d bypassed the fence, filled […]
Back to school!!
Week 2 of the Bronze Age Caithness project started at the heritage centre today, with volunteers back on the computers learning new software packages such as QGIS. Graeme led the sessions in the morning as he showed everybody how to reprocess the LiDAR data creating hillshades. Hillshading is the process of applying a specified altitude […]
Summer School Week 1: Results
Let me start by thanking all of last week’s participants very much! We made a really great start to the project, recording around 50 sites, many of which were previously entirely unknown prior to the LiDAR survey. But what does unknown really mean? Although many of these sites were not recorded on Canmore or on the […]
Fairy rings at Shebster
Despite the awful weather forecast, we enjoyed a great day exploring hut circles to the west of Hill of Shebster, including a row of four potential hut circles that were identified in the LiDAR data. What we found was three fabulous hut circles, all totally unique, and one area that had previously housed a cattle […]
A funerary landscape..?
We had a very productive day today! We were working in an area close to Broubster Village, a post-medieval settlement that was abandoned in the early 1950s. However, our focus was of course on the prehistoric traces in the landscape. The area was known to feature numerous hut circles and burial cairns, and we recorded […]
Picking apart the prehistoric from the post-medieval
We were back out at Broubster today, an area with significant post-medieval settlement remains as well as lots of prehistoric features. A ‘busy’ landscape like this is all the more difficult to pick apart and understand, as we have to try to work out which features are ancient and which less so! We recorded a […]
Off to a flying start!
The summer school has officially begun! We spent yesterday at Castlehill Heritage Centre, with participants learning how to search for new archaeological sites using the LiDAR data, and how to search for site records using Canmore, relating it back to the LiDAR data. Participants also learned how to use the LiDAR data with mapping software […]
And so it begins…
It gives us great pleasure to declare the project officially open begun! What a busy weekend it has been at Castlehill Heritage Centre. On Thursday night we formally launched the project with an evening lecture. Castletown Heritage Society (CHS) Vice Chairman Neil Buchan opened proceedings by introducing the background to the project and its aims. […]
Try Your Hand at Prehistoric Pottery
Have you always fancied yourself as a potter, but never had the chance to have a go? On Saturday 25th of July, Graham Taylor of Potted History will deliver a prehistoric pottery workshop during which participants will make the necessary tools and create replica Bronze Age vessels. As with all project events, this workshop is free and open […]
