Drumelzier has long been associated with the legendary Merlin, who was reputedly imprisoned there by a Dark Age King, killed and buried by the banks of the Tweed nearby too. At least according to the Vita Merlini Sylvestris – the Life of Merlin of the Forest – a medieval tale probably written in Glasgow during the twelfth century.

In 2022, a team of volunteers led by GUARD Archaeology set out to investigate the archaeological roots of this local legend. The results of their work have just been published and reveals the startling survival of the early medieval cultural heritage of the Britons of southern Scotland.

A geophysics survey revealed that there is an archaeological feature resembling a grave near to the reputed location of Merlin’s Grave at Drumelzier.

Excavation of Tinnis Fort, which overlooks Merlin’s Grave, found that this prominent hillfort was occupied around the late sixth and early seventh centuries AD when the story was set and that it has the hallmarks of a lordly stronghold of the time.

And excavation of the Thirlestane Barrows across the other side of the Tweed discovered that sometime between the late-third and late-sixth centuries AD a square barrow was added to a much earlier group of Bronze Age Round Barrows, within which two individuals of exceptional elite status were buried.

What the findings reveal is not that the local story was true, but that the Drumelzier legend, which contains pre-Christian customs and ancient Cumbric names, was associated with local sites where archaeology now shows could credibly have given rise to the story. The legend was not brought here as a wandering medieval tale but more likely originated in Drumelzier itself, perhaps originating as a folk memory, embellished over the centuries before it spread far and wide and changed out of almost all recognition.

Nor, given the archaeology encountered from the Late Mesolithic/Early Neolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age and medieval periods, was this the only trace of local stories that the Drumelzier’s Hidden Heritage project discovered.

A scatter of Late Mesolithic / Early Neolithic flint blade fragments was recovered from the summit of Tinnis, the barest traces of some of the earliest groups of people to ever climb this prominent hill and from its vantage point gaze across a Tweed Valley that looked very much different from the present.

The vitrified ramparts at Tinnis attest to the fall of a Late Iron Age hillfort, the forgotten victims of a forgotten conflict when prominent households vied for power and the foundations for petty kingdoms were being laid.

And in the fourteenth century, a castle was built at Tinnis by the fearsome Tweedies of Drumelzier, who held this castle for the Kings of Scotland from about 1366 until about 1525, a bulwark against English raids from the south.

Whether it was folk memory or stories that clung to the group of Bronze Age round barrows at Thirlestane, these monuments evidently had some meaning in the landscape for the square barrow to be sited so close after an intervening two millennia. The people of ancient Tweeddale were aware of the history beneath their feet and the people that came before and it was through local folklore that stories about their past were passed on.

The Drumelzier’s Hidden Heritage project was a collaboration between the Arthur Trail Association, local heritage groups, volunteers, Magnitude Surveys and GUARD Archaeology Ltd, funded by SSE Renewables Clyde Borders Community Fund, Fallago Environment Fund, Society of Antiquaries of Scotland Dr Euan MacKie Legacy Fund, Glenkerie Community Fund, the National Lottery Heritage Fund, the Hunter Archaeological and Historical Trust, and the Strathmartine Trust

ARO56: Unearthing Ancient Tweeddale: Tinnis Castle, Thirlestane Barrows and Merlin’s Grave by Ronan Toolis, Amanda Gilmore, Thomas Muir, Laura Muser and Alun Woodward is freely available to download from Archaeology Reports Online.

The exhibition Unearthing Ancient Tweeddale at Peebles Museum will run from Saturday 8 June – Saturday 27 July 2024 (closed Wednesdays and Sundays). The exhibition will then be going on tour to Broughton, Drumelzier, Stobo, Traquair House, Eddleston, Moffat, Tweedsmuir, Kirkton Manor and Biggar over the course of August-October 2024.

An early Bronze Age cemetery discovered near Helensburgh by GUARD Archaeology has revealed long-lost secrets of burial rites from Bronze Age Scotland.

Following the excavation by a team of GUARD Archaeologists in 2020, the results of specialist analyses have only just now come to light.

The oldest of the stone-lined graves, or cists, was dated to 2467-2290 BC. Strangely it contained no human remains, but only fragments of pyre material, which appear to have been sufficient to represent the dead.

The largest of the three cists Cist 1, and Cist 3, were constructed at least three centuries later c. 2140-1930 BC. Both contained the cremated remains each of at least two adults and a child or young person, but with no grave goods.

‘The long span of time between these cist graves indicates the lasting memory of burials here,’ said Iraia Arabaolaza, the principal author of the GUARD excavation report. ‘The reuse of the burial place at different periods may have reinforced land ownership or connections to ancestors.’

The place was then revisited between 50 and 300 years after the cist burials, at a time in the first half of the second millennium BC when the burial rituals had changed again, to that of using a pottery vessel to hold the cremated remains then buried at the bottom of a pit. Most of the cremated remains that were found from this phase of use also included one or two adults and a young person together.

The remains of at least 14 adults and 6 young persons were recovered from the cemetery. The burials contained multiple individuals that had been cremated and then collected together and buried as part of the same rite.

‘The incomplete nature of each of the individual remains suggest that the rite of cremation and burial were more important than keeping/collecting and burying the person as whole,’ said Iraia Arabaolaza. ‘This cemetery complex is not only chronologically diverse, but it also reflects the differences in the burial rites and material culture. The burial of multiple people together, part of the same burial rite and possible part of the same cremation process indicates the importance of the cremation rite and the community rather than the individual and the preservation of its body as a whole.’ 

The GUARD Archaeologists discovered that this Bronze Age community were not the first people to occupy this site. A late Neolithic kerbed cairn from around 3500 BC and that had once been fronted by an impressive stone façade, had been cut into by the Bronze Age stone cist graves.

And the recovery of flint tools dating from about 5,000 years before even that, around 8,400 BC, indicate that some of Scotland’s earliest inhabitants, during the late Upper Palaeolithic or early Mesolithic periods occupied this site too.

The archaeological work was funded by Bellway Homes and was required as a condition of planning consent by Argyll and Bute Council who are advised on archaeological matters by the West of Scotland Archaeology Service, who considered there to be a potential for hitherto unknown archaeology to be buried at the site.

ARO51: A Bronze Age cemetery, Sawmill Field, Helensburgh, Argyll and Bute by Iraia Arabaolaza is freely available to download from Archaeology Reports Online.

A community excavation assisted by GUARD Archaeology has unearthed interesting new evidence for Iron Age lifestyles in Sutherland.

Following last year’s collaboration with Clyne Heritage Society, GUARD Archaeology’s Alan Hunter Blair led a dig of two roundhouses in the uplands around Brora, on the croft of Aultcraggie. The structures were first spotted by chair of the society, Nick Lindsay back in 2022 while walking the hills and confirmed on LiDAR. The team of archaeologists and volunteers returned in May 2023 to investigate after access was kindly granted by those working the croft, Fiona Ross and Allan Grant.

The dig focused on two roundhouses opening up trenches across the walls, floors and entrances of the structures. The aim was to find evidence of how people lived in these buildings. Successive floor layers were revealed from which charcoal was recovered (which will allow us to radiocarbon date the roundhouses). Analysis of soil samples recovered from the floor deposits can also tell us what fuel was being used for fires, what the inhabitants were eating and even potentially what wood was used for the structure and roofing.

The team of volunteers also recovered numerous flint tools, which may have been used for cutting and processing food, hide working and even as strike-a-lights for fire. Fragments of a saddle quern was found as well as a large pot was found that had been left where it fell on the floor. Specialist analysis of these artefacts will tell us something about the lifestyles of those who lived here, and how this compares with other similar sites in the region and across Scotland. This will provide new insights into Iron Age Sutherland, revealing aspect of life here buried beneath the ground for the last two and bit thousand years.

The dig saw hundreds of visitors and volunteers across the 12-day duration, including pupils from the local Brora Primary School. And as well as providing opportunities for local volunteers to participate in the dig, students from the Universities of Glasgow, Edinburgh and St Andrews took part, receiving training in archaeological fieldwork to the standards of the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists, which will contribute towards their degrees.

The results of the dig will be reported on in due course, with a publication to follow once all the artefacts and samples have been analysed and dated.

Back in 2014, GUARD Archaeology excavated the remains of an eighteenth-century drovers’ inn, Tigh Caol, near Strachur. Following the delivery of the artefacts to the local museum in 2022, Strachur & District Local History Society wanted to re-engage with some of the local schools who were originally involved in the dig. GUARD Archaeology’s Warren Bailie, who directed the excavation of Tigh Caol, visited Strachur Primary School and Kilmodan Primary School in January 2023 along with three members of the society.

The school visits enabled the whole schools – 36 children and 8 teachers – to have a closer look at the finds recovered along with the model of the inn created by Jim Conquer, and to learn about how eighteenth-century life might have looked around Strachur. Activities included a Tigh Caol jig saw recreating the inn, a spot the difference activity, and clay modelling – trying to recreate some of the vessels that drovers might have drank from when stopping off at Tigh Caol.

‘It was a great pleasure to revisit the community around Tigh Caol,’ Warren noted, ‘and to teach another group of children about Tigh Caol and the importance of archaeology that lies undiscovered in their local area.’

The dig was instigated and funded by Dr Donald Adamson as part of his post-doctoral research at the University of Glasgow with assistance from Strachur & District Local History Society and GUARD Archaeology.

The results of the excavation and scientific analysis of the assemblage were published in 2015: https://www.archaeologyreportsonline.com /reports/2015/ARO17.html

Over two weeks in October 2022, a team of volunteers led by GUARD Archaeologists excavated the Thirlestane Barrows, just to the south of Broughton in the Scottish Borders. This site was only discovered in the summer of 2018 when cropmarks were spotted from a nearby hillside by a local resident.

An aerial photographic survey further revealed that these cropmarks included at least four barrows, split between two fields. Three of these barrow cropmarks comprise circular ditches enclosing a small area with a central feature. The fourth barrow cropmark comprises a square shaped ditch enclosing a small area containing a central feature. Where sites such as this have been excavated, the central feature is a grave, which was originally buried beneath a small mound of earth cast from the enclosing ditch. However, ploughing over the subsequent centuries has removed the mound, leaving only the buried archaeological remains, which are often only visible from the air.

Initiated by the Arthur Trail Association, this is the second site to be investigated in the Drumelzier’s Hidden Heritage project looking at the Dark Age landscape of Upper Tweeddale. The Thirlestane investigation got underway with a geophysics survey led by Magnitude Surveys, which revealed two round barrows in one field but not in the other field.

The volunteers, drawn from Peeblesshire, Biggar, Midlothian, Glasgow, Inverclyde and Perth, then began their excavation revealing the remains of the square barrow, the first such barrow to be excavated in southern Scotland. The square barrow contained at least two graves, though no skeletal remains survived. The graves were aligned east/west, which adheres to early Christian customs. These types of barrow graves are more common north of the Forth where they have been dated to the early medieval period and it may be that the Thirlestane square barrow is early medieval too, perhaps the graves of some of the inhabitants of Tinnis Castle Fort, which they excavated earlier this summer.

But that’s not all the secrets that the Thirlestane Barrows have given up. After completing the excavation of the square barrow, the team moved on to investigating one of the round barrows in the other field. This revealed a small grave containing multiple cremation burial, dating to the Bronze Age. One of the cremations was laid to rest in a bucket urn, which was lifted in its entirety and taken back to GUARD Archaeology’s Finds Lab for delicate excavation. It may turn out during post-excavation analyses that the square barrow was a later addition to an existing cluster of prehistoric barrows that perhaps had stories of their own.

Check out the project’s fieldwork and post-excavation progress: dark-age-digs.com

For more information: www.facebook.com/groups/darkagedigs                                                                                                

The project is funded by:

Over two weeks in August 2022, a team of volunteers led by GUARD Archaeologists will be excavating Tinnis Castle Fort, a prominent rocky hill that overlooks the village of Drumelzier in Peeblesshire.

Initiated by the Arthur Trail Association in collaboration with GUARD Archaeology, the excavation will be focussed not on the ruins of Tinnis Castle itself but the underlying hillfort. Traces of vitrified stone from the ramparts that encircle the hill suggests that this fort was deliberately burnt to the ground, causing the rubble to melt. This phenomenon is apparent on over 100 hillforts across Scotland but is quite rare in the Scottish Borders. The nucleated layout of the fort, comprising a fortified summit and non-concentric enclosures around lower-lying parts of the hill, is similar to other early medieval forts in Scotland. Indeed, the name itself, Tinnis, derives from dinas, meaning fortress in the ancient Cumbric language that was once spoken across southern Scotland at this time.

This isn’t the only Dark Age connection with this part of the Scottish Borders. Since the twelfth century, Drumelzier has been associated with the Merlin legend. The original story was nothing to do with King Arthur but told the story of a man called Lailoken (his name was changed to Merlin after the story was transposed to Wales many centuries later), driven mad by the slaughter of the battle of Arthuret, his encounters with St Kentigirn, his gift of prophecy and his threefold death. What is key to the story is not only its association with real events and real people of the late sixth century AD but its unique association with Drumelzier and Tinnis Castle Fort.

But the excavation at Tinnis Castle is not looking for evidence for Merlin. Nor looking to see if the story was true. What the project is investigating is if there are any archaeological roots to the legend, examining if the archaeology is contemporary with the late sixth century AD when the story is set and therefore if the origins of the Merlin legend, not is historical veracity, lie in Drumelzier.

The excavation at Tinnis Castle will be undertaken in August 2022. And what’s more, the project will be investigating other nearby sites later in the year, that may reveal more of the Dark Age landscape of Upper Tweeddale. Check out the project’s fieldwork and post-excavation progress: dark-age-digs.com

For more information:

www.facebook.com/groups/darkagedigs                                                        Merlintrail.com                                                       

The project is funded by: