A spectacular vitrified fortress overlooking a small Aberdeenshire village has been revealed as one of the largest ancient settlements ever discovered in Scotland.
Archaeologists from the University of Aberdeen have uncovered evidence that as many as 4,000 people may have lived in more than 800 huts perched atop Tap O'Noth near the town of Rhynie.
Radiocarbon dating suggests that the fort – a walled settlement enclosing an area of around 7 hectares – was built between the 5th and 6th centuries AD. and that the settlement may be even earlier, from the 3rd century AD, which means that it is likely to be of Pictish origin.
Its discovery means that the area, which today is a sleepy village home to a few hundred people, once had a hilltop settlement that at its peak may have rivaled the largest known post-Roman settlements in Europe. .
Archaeologists at the University have carried out extensive fieldwork in the surrounding area since 2011, but had previously focused on the lower valley, long known for its Pictish heritage thanks to the famous Rhynie Man stone, found on the farm. Barflat.
Here, in a valley settlement, they discovered evidence of Mediterranean wine consumption, the use of western French glass vessels, and intensive metal production, suggesting it was a high-status site, possibly even with royal connections. .
However, the hillfort that dominates the site from the top of Tap O'Noth had been generally assumed to date from the Bronze or Iron Age.
Professor Gordon Noble, who led the investigation, called the discovery that activity at the site extended into the Pictish period the most surprising of his career .
Because of the fort's large scale and its location on a hillside on the fringes of the Cairngorms, some scholars have suggested that the occupation dated to a time when the climate was warmer, possibly during the Middle Ages. of Bronze, and our first excavations have shown that the vitrified fort at the top of Tap O'Noth dates to 400-100 B.C.
Over the past two years we have been investigating the lower fort of Tap O'Noth which is surrounded by a wall that encircles the lower slopes of the hill. The dating results were simply amazing. They show that the massive fort dates to the 5th and 6th centuries AD. and that it was occupied at the same time as the elite compound in the valley at the Barflat farm. The dates show that settlement on the hill extended into the 3rd century, but both excavated hut platforms also had phases from the 5th to 6th centuries AD.
The University team then conducted drone surveys and used laser technology that showed there are hundreds of cottage platforms inside the fort – perhaps as many as 800 – making it one of the largest ancient settlements discovered in Scotland.
The layout of the buildings suggests that they were likely to have been built and occupied at a similar time, as many are located along roads or distributed in clusters. The drones also showed that within these groups was a noticeably larger hut, indicating that there may have been some form of hierarchical organization within the fort.
Professor Noble added:The size of the upper and lower forts together is around 16.75 hectares and at least one phase dates from the 5th to 6th centuries AD This makes it larger than anything we know of in early medieval Britain – the earliest known fort in early medieval Scotland is Burghead, some 12 acres, and in England the famous post-Roman sites such as Cadbury Castle are seven hectares and Tintagel is some five hectares.
The discovery of the Tap O'Noth completely changes the landscape of this entire period of time. If each of the shacks we identified had four or five people living in them, that means there was a population of over 4,000 people living on the hill. That's almost urban in scale and in a Pictish context we have nothing to compare with this. We had previously assumed that we would have to get to around the 12th century in Scotland before settlements began to reach this size. We potentially have a huge regional settlement with activity that arose in the Iron Age of late Roman times and extends into the 6th century.