A First Time For Everything

The view from the office today was as follows:-

Nestling amongst the trees is Huntingtower Castle, one of my all-time favourite Scottish Castles, and certainly one of the less well known ones.  Though it's not exactly a castle - it's better described as two tower-houses stuck together. 

Today was a red letter day.  I was on a site in Perth using a metal detector on a Scheduled Monument.

Now, those of you who know Ancient Monuments legislation will no doubt be throwing up your hands in horror, because using a metal detector on a Scheduled Monument is illegal.  Fear not - this was a deliberate exercise undertaken at the instigation of Historic Scotland, in association with development works taking place on the site. 

Well, I managed to find a grand total of seven objects as a result of this adventure.  And what were these marvellous finds?  They were: a fragmentary cow-chain, a piece of barbed wire, a nail, some ironworking slag, a possible fragmentary horsehoe.  All modern, and all horribly tedious.

Wow.  If this is how a host of metal-detectorists spend their lives, I'm not impressed...

I'm not surprised there was such a paucity of metalwork finds because the site was a prehistoric ritual landscape of Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age date, therefore not likely to produce metalwork finds in the first place.  But to add insult to injury, I didn't even find any real archaeology!  Not so much as a posthole...  I found one piece of quartz that might just have been worked, but after humming and hawing for a long while, I eventually junked it as fortuitous.

I'm feeling a bit hard-done-by.  My colleagues have done jobs there in the past and at least they've found some evidence of human occupation and activity.  I got diddly-squat.  Which made for a quiet day, but was a wee bit disappointing.

But the castle was nice.  Shame I couldn't take you on a virtual tour.  I will some day, I promise...

A First Time For Everything

The view from the office today was as follows:-

Nestling amongst the trees is Huntingtower Castle, one of my all-time favourite Scottish Castles, and certainly one of the less well known ones.  Though it's not exactly a castle - it's better described as two tower-houses stuck together. 

Today was a red letter day.  I was on a site in Perth using a metal detector on a Scheduled Monument.

Now, those of you who know Ancient Monuments legislation will no doubt be throwing up your hands in horror, because using a metal detector on a Scheduled Monument is illegal.  Fear not - this was a deliberate exercise undertaken at the instigation of Historic Scotland, in association with development works taking place on the site. 

Well, I managed to find a grand total of seven objects as a result of this adventure.  And what were these marvellous finds?  They were: a fragmentary cow-chain, a piece of barbed wire, a nail, some ironworking slag, a possible fragmentary horsehoe.  All modern, and all horribly tedious.

Wow.  If this is how a host of metal-detectorists spend their lives, I'm not impressed...

I'm not surprised there was such a paucity of metalwork finds because the site was a prehistoric ritual landscape of Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age date, therefore not likely to produce metalwork finds in the first place.  But to add insult to injury, I didn't even find any real archaeology!  Not so much as a posthole...  I found one piece of quartz that might just have been worked, but after humming and hawing for a long while, I eventually junked it as fortuitous.

I'm feeling a bit hard-done-by.  My colleagues have done jobs there in the past and at least they've found some evidence of human occupation and activity.  I got diddly-squat.  Which made for a quiet day, but was a wee bit disappointing.

But the castle was nice.  Shame I couldn't take you on a virtual tour.  I will some day, I promise...