Battle Hill 2025

Location: Huntly, Scotland

Season: July 15, 2025 to July 25, 2025

Application Deadline: July 15, 2025

Deadline Type: Exact Date

Website: http://www.rampartscotland.co.uk/index.php/join-the-team/

Program Type:
Field School

RPA Certified:
No

Project Director:
Dr Murray Cook

Project Description:

Battle Hill, Huntly – named after a daring raid in 1307 during the Scottish Wars of Independence – contains a variety of previously unmapped prehistoric sites including Mesolithic, Neolithic and Bronze Age lithic scatters, an Iron Age to Pictish hillfort, and a 3000 year old upstanding hut circle as well as a potential Neolithic/Bronze Age cairn measuring 20-30m in diameter and up to 3m high!

Hillforts are elite Iron Age settlements often surrounded by banks, ditches and palisades, found in prominent locations such as Battle Hill.
Battle Hill preserves a prehistoric landscape built on higher, more marginal ground at a time when the climate was warmer meaning it was possible to live there. As the climate worsened the structures were abandoned. Avoided by subsequent farmers who built and farmed around them, the remains eventually became preserved within the forest itself.

Period(s) of Occupation: Neolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age and Early Medieval

Notes:
The project provides fun and relaxed fieldwork experience with a focus on excavation, planning and context recording.

Project Size: 1-24 participants

Minimum Length of Stay for Volunteers: 1 day

Minimum Age: 17 children under 17 can come with their parents

Experience Required: none

Room and Board Arrangements:
You have to provide your own room and board though there are a small number of places in the dig house where the costs are shared.