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MHG3947 - Possible pit alignment - Hilton, Inverness

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NH 683 436 to NH 683 434. Pit-alignments, Hilton: Air photography has revealed the crop-marks of two pit-alignments 400m NE of the enclosure described on NH64SE 39. That to the W runs in a gentle curve for about 200m; the E example runs for a distance of about 110m parallel with the N part of the W alignment and about 7m from it. <1>

The cropmarks were investigated by AOC (Scotland) in late 1990 as part of works on the the line of the proposed Inverness Distributor Road. The route of the proposed roadline threatened some 50 m of the western, and 25 m of the eastern 'pit alignment'. Therefore, the excavation was designed to locate and excavate a sample of the pits in this area. As an accurate plot of the cropmarks was not available at this stage, three trenches, each roughly 4 x 50 m, were laid out at right angles to the estimated position of the alignments; these trenches were stripped by machine to the base of the ploughsoil and manually cleaned. This method failed to locate the 'pit alignments', and the excavated area was consequently enlarged by linking the three trenches at their eastern ends. The area threatened by the roadline could not be excavated further as standing water was encountered close to the surface in the central and southern machine trenches. Excavation failed to reveal any pits although the trenches were accurately located. The cropmark of two parallel pit alignments had only been recorded once and was now thought to have been created by temporary surface soil features. <2> <3>

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Map

Location

Grid reference	Centred NH 6833 4351 (30m by 30m) (2 map features)
Map sheet	NH64SE
Civil Parish	INVERNESS AND BONA
Geographical Area	INVERNESS

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