Back again in Selkirk! Ryan McNutt (a doctoral researcher in the Centre) and I headed down from Glasgow this morning. This time we have the Land Rover so it was a bit of a bumpy ride down the M8 and A7! Great fun though once you get used to it.
We met at the Cricket Club today and began work on Area C, making sure to avoid the Scheduled Area protecting an Early Historic settlement and burial ground (eeek!). From the work we have done with documentary records and map regression, it appears this area should have evidence of the main engagement of the Royalist and Covenanter forces. The northern edge of the field (now in the Scheduled Area) is bordered by quite a substantial field bank and ditch in front of it. We hope to do some excavation of this in August to find out if it could be contemporary with the battle and if it had indeed been modified as a defensive structure by Montrose.
The ground was also ploughed and seed drilled for turnips so again we were a little limited on what we could do. However, there was enough room to carry out a good sample of the area. First of all we covered the edge of the field which hadn't been seeded. Unfortunately very little came up, except modern items thrown over the garden wall from the row of houses opposite. We then decided to metal detect transects using the tram-lines created by the tractor as a low impact soloution. These transects ran in a north western direcion across the field and stopped at the scheduled area. We uncovered one musket ball and a piece of what appears to be cannister shot. The musket ball was very unusual as it seems to have an iron object set within it and a hole running through the centre! The cannister shot, musket balls placed in a can and fired from a cannon, have a very distinctive signature with facets all over the surface caused when the balls bounce off each other when fired out the cannon. We also found a small coin which may be French and possibly dating to the mid-17th century. The decision was taken to cover this area more intensively moving along the furrows and being careful not to disturb the seed drills. This was hard going but worth the effort to make sure the ground was covered.
Doesn't sound too bad, but I think in this area we would expect to find much more than two projectiles and a coin. Something we will have to consider when we come to interpret the site.
Tomorrow (Friday), we will be moving to the orchard area just opposite Calton Cottage and Leslie Cottage. I think this will be an exciting area as it sits in front of the bank and ditch mentioned earlier!
We have been keen to make advantage of staying in Selkirk and when we were invited to join the Etterick Forest Archers for an evening we jumped at the chance. Myself, Ryan, Chris Bowles (regional archaeologist) and his wife Claire headed up to Philiphaugh to have a go at the archery. After a rather shameful start I turned out to be a bit of a hotshot and got myself a golden centre!
Fingers and toes crossed for Friday!
All the best,
Tasha Hood of Etterick Forest
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| Area C - a very patriotic field |
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| My arrow is the one in the middle! : ) |
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