This space functions as a blog of sorts, short informal updates to keep you in the loop with what project members are up to during the year.
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5th November 2023
We were excited to receive a notice that the 2023 edition of ‘Celebrating Archaeology in Scotland’ has been published by Historic Environments Scotland, including a short excerpt about our project written by Erik and Joe, concluding that:
“The three-year mark has begun to feel something of a waypoint – the trial stage is over. Looking towards the future, we are eager to solidify and revitalize the project with more personnel and more expert help from the wider landscape of Scottish archaeology. This, we feel, will help guarantee another three years of discovery for Fife.”
You can read the full issue of Celebrating Archaeology in Scotland Magazine here: https://archaeologystrategy.scot/magazine/
– PHLP Team
9th July 2023
PFS 23 — Week 3
Now three quarters of our way through the season, this week’s focus has been on “figuring out what we need to figure out before we close up shop,” as Erik put it. We have also seen the continuation of our community days, and the progression down on features in both Trench 1 and Trench 3. This has allowed us to section areas of further interest, while continuing our working in the labs which has allowed us to continue quantifying our data, and start dating some of our finds.
The tale of Trench 3 took another twist early in the week, as a feature of two parallel lines of stones was uncovered early on. This led to the beginning of a section drawn out across the bottom of the trench which has seen Anna and a rotating cast of plucky volunteers beginning to make their way down through a series of new contexts. Trench 2 saw little in the way of any features appearing, despite a steady stream of finds being located. Over in Trench 1, our diggers made fantastic progress moving through an early modern context and have now entered context 9, from which a series of large pieces of gritty ware has already been uncovered.
The progress made this week has been absolutely tremendous, with a plethora of excellent finds coming up. While the rain on Tuesday meant that we weren’t able to return to the trenches, we quickly set to work in the labs, making sure the essential work of digitising our registers and such was completed, and made a start on dating some of our more interesting finds and ceramics. Highlights have included a half penny dated to the 1860s and several fantastic pieces of medieval gritty ware.
Our primary goal in the next week will be to reach a fully medieval context. Having gotten so much deeper this week – especially in our sections – and found so much medieval ceramic, this should now be within our reach. The team has done an incredible job thus far, but with just one more week to go, the pressure to finish up is piling on! As Anna said, at this point we have “set the project up to put its nose to the grindstone next week before the inevitable conclusion of digging and backfilling the trenches.” Our thanks to our many fantastic diggers who have come out and given it their all this week, and farewell to those who will be leaving us!
– Joe Lippitt
2nd July 2023
PFS 2023 — Week 2
Returning to the site for our second week of excavations, our hopes were set high upon entering historic contexts in all three of our trenches and puzzling out what exactly is being revealed in each one. Our first community day was held on the Wednesday, and the halfway point of the season was met with the customary fanfare on Friday night.
The weather this week was a capricious foe, preventing us from heading out to the site twice, and hammering us with rain and wind when we were able to make it out. Many congratulations to our diggers who did brave some of the more adverse conditions this week, particularly during those pesky downpours that kept ruining our finds sheets on Wednesday! As Kristoffer said, “It’s good to see our volunteers so engaged and enthusiastic about the work we are doing and not least their willingness to brave the rain and wind.”
The poor weather did provide opportunities to get our hands on some of our finds in the lab, working on the proper documentation and setting the project up for success when we come to report writing in the future. Discussing the importance of this work with Anna, she commented that this is not only “a necessary and practical aspect of the project, but also a great chance for volunteers, especially first-time diggers, to gain experience in the diverse jobs that contribute to archaeological field work.”
Coming to the actual archaeology itself, Trench 1 finally had its first context come up, with the majority of finds coming in various forms of ceramics. Having such a wide array of finds in the topsoil, the contexts beneath will hopefully grant us more insight into the nature of what feature is beginning to appear. What initially seemed to be an interesting feature in Trench 3 is looking increasingly natural. While Anna sections the trench to further investigate, Trench 2 has seen an expansion to the northwest which a crack team of elite diggers has quickly set to levelling.
Now past the halfway point in the field season we bid farewell to the majority of diggers from the first couple of weeks on site and look forward to meeting the new hands that are joining us next week. As Erik put it, “it has been a pleasure to see the volunteers begin to come into their own as archaeologists, and to see everyone come together as an effective and sociable team.” Our third week promises to be our most impactful yet, with the nature of these features yet to be understood, and a veritable treasure trove of finds uncovered already, we look forward to getting down to business.
– Joe Lippitt
25th June 2023
PFS 2023 — Week 1
Now entering our third field season at the farm, we are turning our attention towards the castle gardens, opening a series of trenches over the eastern section of the gardens. Following a geophysical survey of the area conducted by Kristoffer, Anna, and myself earlier this year, this summer the team will be conducting a wide area excavation of the area surrounding Pittarthie Castle.
This first week, the emphasis has been squarely placed upon the archaeology, as our survey teams will begin investigations of the wider area in the coming weeks. Joined by a bold group of intrepid diggers, faces both old and new, we’ve already made brilliant progress. Kristoffer summarised our excitement, saying “it has been great getting back in the field again, and an absolute joy seeing this season’s diggers pick up new skills so fast.”
Work began with the onerous task of removing topsoil. Battered by rough weather at the beginning of the week, our diggers rose to the occasion magnificently, attacking the soil with all their might and making short work of the turf. This meant that by the second day everyone was digging, and the turf on every trench had been removed by that afternoon.
Facing high temperatures and unrelenting sun, the second half of the week continued with the patient peeling back of topsoil, as our diggers picked up the basic skills of trowelling and finds marking.
Despite early days, artefacts were in no short supply, with all the diggers coming away with a find of their own this week. It was great to see those new to the field taking so well to the task, as Anna remarked “people had their first ever finds as we uncovered some sherds of white glazed red-ware, so overall a very successful week!” Evidence of gritty-ware in the topsoil was particularly pleasing, as it will hopefully lead towards evidence of wider activity as we begin delving deeper, hopefully providing us with a greater insight into the relationship between the tower house and the wider area.
It isn’t just finds coming up, as Kristoffer mentioned “we have started to uncover some interesting features and contexts in all of our trenches though there is much yet to reveal.” These initial hints of features promise bigger things to come, and it will be interesting to see “how they develop over the coming weeks and how they will fit in with Pittarthie castle and the broader historic landscape.”
While the weekend will bring some much-needed relief for our aching muscles and searing sunburns, we look forward to returning on Monday with renewed vigour and some welcome new diggers. As we look to the future, Erik remarked that if these early stages are anything to go by, next week “promises to be full of excitement as we start to explore the site more in-depth.” Our focus in the coming week will be to continue excavations in each trench, revealing more of these exciting features, and gaining a good understanding of the stratigraphy. Next week we hope to be able to share with you some more interesting drawings and photos of our work.
– Joe Lippitt
30th July, 2022
PFS 2022 — Week 4
Our field season drew to a finale on Friday, with herculean efforts abounding during the day and great festivities at the barbeque that night. Being the last weekly update for this season, I would just like to begin with a preambulatory thank you to everyone who leant a helping hand this month, our volunteers, and our fantastic hosts Patrick, Angus, and Douglas – although cliché, I think I speak for all of my colleagues when I say it would not have been possible without everyone’s efforts. Thank you.
Now, on to the archaeology.
We began this week by finally revealing what we believe to be the historic surface of the road, a dense layer thick with gravel, slag, and black gritty mortar, then immediately followed photography and a morning hunched over the drawing frame doodling in each stone on to our trench drawing. The clock was ticking as we began to excavate this context on Thursday morning, but in a few short hours the context had already yielded a selection of finds to confirm an Improvements era date. As is typical however, the crescendo came late on our final day: after spending the morning recording, Joe and I made the last-minute decision to go for it and cut a two meter by half-meter section into the road. The clarity with which the resulting profile illustrated the road’s construction made it well worth the effort, while the smallest piece of white gritty ware found deep in the soil beneath the road was exactly the terminus post quem flavoured icing on the cake we wanted.
Looking back on the first newsletter, I said that our essential aim in excavating a further portion of the road was to clarify how and when it was constructed. At the conclusion of last year’s season we had arrived at inklings of a date range and an idea as to how the road was constructed; these past four weeks have both challenged and confirmed our understanding of this piece of the Pittarthie puzzle, a part of the story we look forward to sharing in the coming months through our 2022 report and our website.
While Joe, the Faithful Four and I were drawing Trench 5 to a close, work was kicking off on the castle grounds. Kristoffer did an excellent job in keeping his wires from getting crossed as he surveyed 2,800 square meters this week with help from our volunteers. Speaking to Kristoffer this weekend, he told me, that “it has overall been a productive week, and we’ve managed to set a couple of impressive internal records for fastest 10x10m grid surveyed while maintaining accuracy and precision, with Sam managing an impressive sub 9 minutes run, and Nathaniel in second place less than 30 seconds behind.” Still, despite the handiwork of swift-footed Achilles, “there is still quite a bit left for us to survey, and over the next couple of weeks we’ll continue surveying in and around the grounds of Pittarthie castle to see what may lay hidden below our feet.” This work will continue throughout August, and we hope there will be some interesting things to share come September.
Anna and her crew have likewise spent this last week drawing the castle grounds, successfully recording 2,400 square meters by the time they drew things to a close on Friday. Although the sketches remain as loose sheets of paper, we were all excited to hear from Anna that already “trends that can’t be seen by the naked eye are materializing on the papers,” including everything from wall collapses to new features. Looking towards the near future, a few more trips out to the site and some time digitizing on AutoCAD will be needed to finish off the plan, but we look forward to sharing what we believe to be the first detailed drawing of the castle and its surrounds once it is complete.
As a final note, I would just like to conclude by speaking personally about how proud I am of this year’s cohort, the work they have done, and my high hopes for the future. While we were unable to match the total square meters of excavation as last year, the quality of archaeology and the amount of insight we have derived from it this year has far exceeded the 2021 season and I think bodes very well for the future of the project. This is a future that is right now being pursued by the survey team, the dedication of which cannot be overvalued. For these reasons and many more I hope readers of this newsletter will continue to stay in the loop and even join us in the field this autumn – for fieldwalking, tours, or even small test digs – as we look to resume piecing together the history of a Fife farm.
– Erik Crnkovich
23rd July, 2022
PFS 2022 — Week 3
We began this week with high hopes for completing work at Trench 5, opening a new trench over the smithy, beginning the drawn survey of the gardens, and starting on the geophysical survey of the castle grounds – a lot to accomplish, such that we have had to “cut back long hope” to a certain degree.
Trench 5 never ceases to be somewhat pesky, where excavation was slowed by the diffuse and disturbed stratigraphy and photography halted by a veritable Venusian level of sun. Yet from Wednesday we were back in the trench digging into unexplored contexts, which we hope will prove to be less disturbed and provide us with a clean look at the road. In fact we began on a high note, with a good amount of medieval white gritty ware appearing at the top of the context and giving us hope that we could kick back the date of our road a few centuries. By Friday however things had largely returned to the usual assortment of slag and corroding iron, awaiting further analysis and avoiding an easy date.
Work did briefly begin at the smithy while Trench 5 was undergoing the essential but time-consuming process of documentation at the beginning of the week. An awkward trench (Trench 3) was opened to explore the area east and south of last year’s, it was worked intermittently for three days but by Wednesday the unfortunate decision had been made to close it in order to focus on excavating Trench 5 and survey work. The short life of Trench 3 was largely uneventful, but we did make one interesting discovery: a self-made context! After carefully removing the upper layer of the turf, we were amused to find a compact layer interspersed through the remaining root-bed in the area surrounding the 2020 and 2021 trenches – had we been a bit more careful in our dusting, I am sure we would have found a very familiar boot print!
Meanwhile survey work has been progressing around the castle grounds. Anna gave a quick update on this week: “This week we finally started on the survey of the terraced gardens which, while being less meticulous than the castle survey, provided our teams with the opportunity to employ a wider range of archaeological survey techniques. After laying a series of 10 meter x 10 meter plots on the east-west axis of the north edge of the garden, the surveyors learned how to set out and use baselines for plotting features on graphs. One obstacle that had to be overcome was the distinct challenge of finding features — topographic, anthropogenic, or otherwise — in the tall grasses. Through an incredible performance of kicking at the ground looking for variations and dancing over the nettles and thistles, the teams drew plots ‘North-West 2-10’ and took levels for ‘North-West 2-8.’ All the work conducted this week required a very high level of archaeological competence — the ability to distinguish between a feature of interest and animal disturbance, the mindfulness to see the details of the 10×10 plots in the wider context of the 12500 m2 garden, etc. — and everyone who came out rose to that challenge, turning the garden survey from a daunting goal to a growing pile of drawings.”
On Thursday we were happy to welcome Professor Richard Bates and Mr Donald Herd out to the site, both from the University of St Andrews. Professor Bates instructed Kristoffer and a collection of five or so students in how to conduct geophysical survey with electrical resistivity and they were soon logging data over the hypothesised route of the road behind the castle. Meanwhile, we were grateful that Mr Herd was also able to come out and take some aerial images – we are hoping the extremely dry weather will reveal some interesting targets for geophysical survey. Again, we cannot thank the both of them enough.
Recently the project has also been trying to develop a larger presence in the community with the hope of sharing our work and drawing more people out to the site. One step we took a few weeks ago was to invite some local reporters out to the site, and we were glad to hear back from Ms Clarke at the Courier and host her at the site on Thursday. It was certainly a first for Joe and I, who gave her a tour of the site and were briefly interviewed about the project. The article should appear sometime this week.
We are filled with a sense of both excitement and anxiety as we approach our final week in the field. At Trench 5, Joe is “excited to puzzle out the last few aspects of the road with our final group of diggers” during the first half of the week, possibly involving another section being cut through it. Armed with the geophysics equipment, Kristoffer is prepared to continue exploratory work this week while Anna will continue surveying the gardens.
– Erik Crnkovich
16th July, 2022
PFS 2022 — Week 2
We have survived another week at Pittarthie Farm, although the archaeology this week has certainly put up a good fight!
Excavation has continued on the road, where every trowel scrape has revealed a more complex deposition this week than we initially assumed. Clearing off the remaining topsoil Monday morning revealed two new contexts, one a compact gravel layer in a patch at the north end of the road (Cont. 2) and the other a siltier, more homogenous layer overlying the remainder of the trench (Cont. 3). The week has been spent on clearing away Context 3, which has yielded a plethora of tobacco pipe stems as well as a smattering of ceramics, while slag still made up the majority of finds. By the end of the day Friday we had managed to remove much of Context 3 to reveal Context 2 continuing down the road and to the west, while another context (Context 4) filled the area east of the road. Lots of scraping, spraying, and pondering this week as we try to distinguish one context from another. On the positive side, the complex deposition at this trench is far more interesting than the simple stratigraphy we came across last year; Joe has noted that “this will hopefully give us a greater understanding of the structure and building methods used when the feature was built.”
Things at the caste have been less hectic this week than they were last. Anna noted that: “Week two was all about the photographic side of our ‘drawn and photographic survey.’ With the help of a number of team members, every internal face of the castle was documented with the camera.” One challenge of this week was figuring out “when standard conventions of building survey could and couldn’t be applied. While our castle is relatively very well preserved in in most parts, it is still distinctly a dilapidated ruin that lacks features necessary for typical survey methods (like an identifiable and/or level floor for useful baselines).”
On Friday we said goodbye to most of the people we have had the pleasure of working with the past two weeks. Kristoffer voiced a common sentiment, telling me that “it’s been great seeing our diggers really growing into the work and their newly gained skills this week, taking on a broad range of new tasks in stride.” A special shout out to Lily this week, who was instrumental in helping us parse one contexts from another. As we approach our third week at Pittarthie Farm we are looking forward to doubling the size of our team, allowing us to open a new trench over the smithy – we expect silver chalices and gold doubloons this year! Meanwhile, Erik and Anna will begin to survey the castle’s 1.24ha of gardens with pencil, paper and measuring tapes galore – were it not done out of choice, one could think it was repentance for innumerable sins!
– Erik Crnkovich
9th July, 2022
PFS 2022 — Week 1
As you will likely be aware we have recently embarked on our second field season out at Pittarthie Farm! This year we have decided to supplement our normal Notes from the Field with a weekly newsletter to keep you all abreast with our trials, tribulations, discoveries and dramas.
We were excited to welcome everyone and open the season with a small afternoon reception held in St Andrews last Sunday. Greetings and drinks went around outside of Swallow Gate as the staff and myself gave a quick introduction to our project, what we accomplished last summer, and what we aim to accomplish this year.
The next morning we were quick to get to work, with Kristoffer and Joe plotting out our trenches while I guided the diggers on a short tour of the farm and introduced them to the types of finds we will be keeping an eye out for as we start excavation. By Tuesday morning we had successfully cleared the turf off of our first trench (Trench 5) of the season, a large 4x10m rectangle stretching across the road and into the unexplored center of the site.
Braving high winds and heat – a veritable simoom some days! – it took us nearly the full week to trowel through the topsoil. Our aim of revealing the road by the end of the week was in hindsight optimistic, yet still just narrowly missed as we began to uncover the road’s gravely, clayey surface at noon on Friday.
Pesky as the topsoil was, artefacts were in no short supply this week, with a total of 203 artefacts being recorded by the end of day Friday. While keeping in mind that they were sourced in the topsoil, excitement was maintained by the discovery of some interesting flints, a variety of medieval ceramics, and a prised blue glass bead. Approximately 90% of the finds, however, were simple pieces of slag – the recording of which underscored the occasionally exhausting nature of meticulous eastings, northings, and levels(!) – but which we hope will yield interesting data when Kristoffer plugs it into GIS. Joe was particularly excited about the data, noting that it is “strong evidence of metalworking that could lead to a better understanding of the wider site.”
While Kristoffer, Joe, and I have been toiling away on the road with the rest of the diggers, Anna has been engaged this week at the tower-house. Prior to any archaeology beginning, a daring frontal assault had to be carried out on the castle in order to route a posse of sheep which had taken up defensive positions behind tower’s arrow slits and gun loops! An engagement ensued and the heroic action of one digger in particular, Mikayla, were critical in successfully dislodging this woolly garrison.
With the castle once more in the hands of bipeds, Anna and the survey team could start the process of drawing a floorplan of the tower-house. Joined by one or two of the diggers per day, Anna noted how the fresh eyes of each new member of the survey team served to bring new features to light, “astounding observations were made by someone every day – these include missing timber holes, disguised vaulted ceilings, and obscured doorways between rooms.” Present across all the rooms, however, is what could be (flatteringly) described as the handcrafted nature of the building: proportions are consistently inconsistent, and even standard architectural features such as the bay windows are all unique in their specific dimensions. As the survey continues, it will be interesting to see what stories these inconsistencies tell, and I was pleased to hear over our end of the week ice cream that every surviving room as well as the external footprint of the castle had been successfully recorded.
While taking the weekend to let our “trowelling muscles” repair and our sunburns cool, we look forward to welcoming new diggers and getting back out to the site on Monday. As the first order of business, we will look to finishing uncovering the surface of the road and the contexts that abut it at the east and west. If the topsoil finds are anything to go by, we have a lot to look forward to this coming week! As Kristoffer summarised to me, while the finds are not particularly flashy at this point in time, we are “looking forward to seeing how they will change and develop across the trench now that we have finally gotten through the topsoil and are seeing some more interesting stratigraphy come forth.” At the castle, Anna will be looking to finish up with the interior of the tower-house in order to move on to a drawn survey of the famed gardens and so we will hopefully be able to share some nice drawings or photos with you all next week.
– Erik Crnkovich
15th April 2022
Our Open House: A Day for Prospective Archaeologists
Taking to the field can never be done without due process, for every hour of excavating, there are several times that put into planning trenches, preparing equipment, and coordinating volunteers.
It was this that drew a group of prospective summer diggers to the University of St Andrews Classics department one Friday afternoon for an information session. A brief talk was given by Erik, Kristoffer, and myself, before a ‘scratch-and-sniff’ session showcasing some finds taken from Pittarthie, and revealing our display case which now resides in the Classics Department’s archaeology room.
A huge thank you is due to Katrina Bolman for putting together our display case. We hope the presentation inspired some newcomers, and reinvigorated some familiar faces, to join us in the field this summer.
– Joe Lippitt
19th March 2022
Landscape Tour — Something New!
With the warming weather, we are lacing up our boots and heading out to the farm again — not just to carry on with our research, but to start sharing its story through landscape tours.
This may be risky in March. As sometimes on the farm we find ourselves laying out trenches in the pouring rain, struggling to tie wet orange lines around wet pegs, or pushing the bounds of the English language as our socks – which had held out against the monsoon for so long – are finally overrun. Sometimes we find ourselves simply walking across the land, hopping over fences, and leaping burns among sunlight gorse and gooseberries, forgetting that archaeology is ever anything but this. We prefer the latter; ignorance is bliss.
We were thankful then that our first formal tour was blessed with this enviable weather, and we were pleased to take a group of nine peers from the University of St Andrews through changing times, spaces, and places at the farm. We began simultaneously at the beginning and the ending, departing from Craigloun where the earliest Neolithic inhabitation is recorded and the modern farmstead took shape. Then over a fence and brook and through the Craigloun den to the site of the mysterious ‘Neolithic hut’ – a slippery site that avoids designation, both temporal and functional. As we trek out of the den and up towards the tower-house, the ancient environment begins to come into view: the glacial topography is visible across the valley, streambeds can be discerned along the side of the hills, and the flat valley bottom gives away the location of a potential infilled loch.
The land as a source of sustenance, through hunting, gathering, and agriculture comes into view as we travel up the hill and into the medieval and early modern period at the tower-house. An intimate look at the size and layout of the castle draws our attention to why the tower-house was constructed in the first place and for what purpose – how was the medieval landscape lived on, governed, and farmed – before we turn to the later formal gardens and metaled road, that project us into the work of the Improvers. As our motley crew journeyed back across the fields, the work of the Improvers and their lasting impact on the Fife landscape comes into focus as we pass the preserved rig and furrow field and finally return to the present farmyard at Pittarthie.
A trial run, we learned a great deal about how to guide a group and where to improve in the future; a big thank you to everyone, whose patience and feedback was greatly appreciated.
Further, let this be an invitation to come and join us on our next adventure!
– Erik Crnkovich
Feb-Apr 2021
Fieldwalking
A strange tingling sensation crawled up my arm as I sat down on the cold grass, across from me were the last remnants of the Frozen Chosen and a few brave newcomers. It was early April and we were on lunch break from fieldwalking our second to last field, all of us hiding behind a hedgerow on the windy west side of the farm. As the pink speckles formed on my hand and arm, Kristoffer and Josephine chuckled as they saw me come to terms with having just sat in a patch of stinging nettles – a plant far foreign to my native florals. Just as fieldwalking improved my knowledge of Fife’s foliage, so it also helped familiarise us with the local ceramics and with the land’s occupation at a wide, landscape level.
Beginning in February of 2021, when snow still hid in the shadows of the hedgerows and ditches but while the ground was clearly exposed beneath the seedling winter oats, a group of approximately six to ten University of St Andrews students could be found on any given weekend walking the fields at Pittarthie Farm. The purpose was twofold: first, to approach the occupation of the landscape at a macro level, looking to understand the temporal and geographical range of occupation at the farm. Second, fieldwalking was undertaken in the hopes of locating or contextualizing observable features – dense scatters can be clues to archaeological remains beneath the surface or can help us understand the general areas in which and the paths along which people have dwelled. The results of this survey will be available in our first primary data report, but a general lack of finds in the western most fields was notable.
Over the course of the three-month survey, we were happy to be able to engage with close to twenty-five different students from the University of St Andrews – bringing them out to walk the furrows, showing students more of Fife as well as teaching them about archaeological methods, local artifact typologies, and history.
– Erik Crnkovich
Petardy Historic Landscape Project 