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Remains of hut circles and field system recorded at this site. At least ten hut circles, with entrances in the south or southeast and diameters varying from 6 m - 12.5 m and height 0.2 m - 0.8 m. Banks vary from 1.5 m - 4 m wide. The 'cairns' are probably stone clearance heaps. They vary from 3 m - 5 m in diameter and from 0.45 m - 0.83 m in height, one lies within a metre of a hut circle. In March 2005, two hut circles and associated clearance cairns were examined as part of the Kintore Landscape Project. The hut circles survived up to two courses high, with patchily surviving occupation surfaces. Roundhouse 1 had a ring-ditch, together with numerous chipped and coarse stone tools and pot sherds. Fragments of charcoal were also retrieved. Roundhouse 2 provided one solitary find, a possible stone pot lid. The cairns were simply clearance cairns and contained no artefacts or structures. Forestry Commission have recorded an earthwork bank at NJ 8132 1792, running approximately north-south, and a denuded boundary bank running from NJ81211773 to NJ 81211769. The Balbithan Prehistoric Landscape Project undertook a five-year programme of keyhole excavations in and around the hut circles and clearance cairns in Balbithan Wood (see NJ81NW0230). In 2011 a series of test pits were dug around each hut circle and keyhole excavations carried out on two of the hut circles. In situ charcoal was recovered from each roundhouse and one external feature recorded. Artefacts from the roundhouse included worked flint and quartz, and a Mesolithic core. Season 3 (August 2013) examined Hut Circle 18 and nearby Cairn 3. The hut circle measured 6.2 m in diameter with a stone rich bank up to 0.6 m high and 1.2 m thick. The bank contained numerous sherds of Carinated and Impressed Ware, indicating a probable Neolithic or Early Bronze Age ring cairn rather than a Middle Bronze Age hut circle. Cairn 3 measured 6.6 m in diameter and up to 0.75 m high, although it had been flattened by forest ploughing. It appears to be a small clearance cairn around a glacial erratic, subsequently enlarged with the addition of a kerb, and then abutted by linear clearance. Finally there were two small collections of stones, the first associated with a cluster of nine cores, the other associated with two pieces of a leaf-shaped arrowhead. Work in 2014 has included survey of all the hut circles and a later 'enclosure' containing a later longhouse. Two possible hut circles were investigated, one found to be a natural, the other confirmed as a hut circle. A circa 5 m diameter clearance cairn was found on investigation to be a linear cairn, circa 9 m long, the body of the cairn containing of hand thrown pottery, and may have been a long cairn. Further work was undertaken at the cairn in 2015, and numerous pottery sherds and lithics recovered. Excavation at the 40 m diameter enclosure revealed a substantial stone bank with extensive stone revetment, the enclosure subsequently levelled and the longhouse constructed. Pottery and a hammer stone were recovered from the interior.
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Historic Environment Records (HER)