EHG6226 - Excavation - proposed Cabot Highland Golf Course, Castle Stuart (Areas SR5 & PS3)

Two archaeological ‘strip & record’ mitigation excavations were undertaken by Avon Archaeology (Highland) in advance of preliminary development works for a new Championship Golf Course at Castle Stuart, Dalcross near Inverness. The mitigation-stage fieldwork was designed to fully characterise and record significant buried archaeological deposits, features and finds located in two specific parts of the development area, the first, designated Mitigation Areas SR5 and PS3, identified during a preceding stage of evaluation trenching (see EHG5992). Excavation in Area SR5 revealed part of a previously unrecorded ‘ladder’ field system, the long axis of which was aligned northwest to southeast. The field system (Feature Group 2) was defined by a series of rectilinear ditches that demarcated three separate and equally-sized rectangular enclosures with entrances on the north side, each of which appears to have been further subdivided by a shallow central ditch. The field system was considered to represent a rare and important survival that was provisionally dated by stratified pottery to the later medieval period. Elsewhere in Area SR5 a group of undated and highly truncated pits and gullies (Feature Group 1), located at a high-point on the site, appeared to cluster around the remnants of a small ring-ditch that in turn surrounded a small pit containing charred remains. The group of features appeared to reflect an associated but as yet undated phase of activity that was provisionally interpreted to reflect funerary activity of probable prehistoric date. Other features recorded in Area SR5 included a single ditch segment (Feature Group 4), which produced a substantial marine shell-midden assemblage and later medieval pottery sherds, and a large number of miscellaneous truncated features including postholes, gullies, pits and a hearth-base (Feature Group 3) that were distributed widely across the excavation area, none of which produced any direct dating evidence or indicated any particular spatial arrangements. These latter features were provisionally interpreted to reflect one or more phases of unspecified prehistoric activity over the site. Excavation in Mitigation Area PS3, confirmed the presence of a series of buried linear soil features that had been identified in the earlier evaluation trenches but were undated. The excavation revealed a large boundary ditch aligned north to south and an adjacent series of smaller ditches on a parallel alignment. Finds from the fill of the main ditch, which was not depicted on 1st Edition OS mapping, indicated a late 18th to earlier 19th century date for its construction and use. The archaeological deposits and features recorded in Mitigation Area SR5, specifically the evidence for possible prehistoric funerary activity and subsequent medieval agricultural activity (Feature Groups 1, 2 and 4) were considered to represent important new archaeological evidence that would have the potential to add to present understanding of past human activity on the Moray Firth coast during the prehistoric and medieval periods. Accordingly, it was recommended that a further and final stage of selective post-excavation analysis and reporting should be undertaken for selective evidence gathered in Area SR5 in order to clarify the chronology and character of the archaeological activity represented. The evidence recorded in Area PS3 was deemed to be of no more than local importance and no further post-excavation reporting, beyond was considered justified or recommended. It was intended that the details, programme and resources for the proposed final post-site analysis and reporting work for evidence gathered in Area SR5 would be set out in a Post-excavation Research Design (PERD). <1>