Search on for Pictish settlement
Dig team hope to uncover site
Archaeologists will be in Perthshire this weekend to try to find signs of a Pictish settlement.
The team from GUARD Archaeology in Glasgow will be excavating a number of sites in Bridge of Tilt from today until Monday.
It follows on from experts in the field recently managing to digitally recreate the face of a Pictish man dug up in the Bridge of Tilt in the 1980s, assisted by forensic artist Hayley Fisher.
Now, the team is keen to find out if this is just an isolated burial, or perhaps part of something bigger.
Bob Will, who is leading the digs from GUARD Archaeology, said: “The plan is we will be there over the weekend doing some trial trenches with local volunteers and doing some more geophysical surveys around the village and doing some digging with them, all based on the facial reconstruction we did.
“We want to see if this was an isolated burial of part of several burials, like a cemetery. There may even be evidence of a settlement there. We just need to see and find out more about the Picts in the Blair Atholl area.
“First we need to see if there are any more burials, and then see if we can find evidence of any houses that would be great.”
Bob says there has been a huge amount of interest in this archaeology project from people across Highland Perthshire.
The archaeologists will be working with a number of community groups, including the Blair Atholl Country Life Museum, Clan Donnachaidh Society, and Blair Atholl and Struan Community Council.
He continued: “There has not been any work done yet in the village, so this is an opportunity to build on what we know at the moment and take that a bit further.
“There has been lots of interest in the village, they are all wanting to take part. We will be working in people’s gardens doing test digs as well so there’s been The digitally-recreated face of a Pictish man
lots of interest from there.
“The team from Glasgow will be supervising, but hopefully the local volunteers can see what they can find from themselves. It has been great to have the local community come forward with their stories about when we first visited the site back in 1986.”
On the day, the team will be joined by budding archaeologists from Blair Atholl Primary School, who will be helping them with digs in the school’s playground.
Simon George, a class teacher from the school who will be taking the children out to the digs,
said: “The archaeologists have done a lot of ground work in the school grounds over the past couple of years, so they will be opening up the trenches and the kids can go out and have a look and see if they can find anything.
“The children will go out in groups during the day, and they are quite keen. The archaeologists came in to talk to us on Wednesday about what they will be looking for and what has already been found, and the kids were asking good questions and hopefully some will be inspired to take part over the weekend too.”
Simon added he hopes
the dig might inspire some to become archaeologists in the future.
He continued: “This is a great way to engage them with the community and get a chance to take part in the history of their area. It also gave them some different ideas about what they can do for a living after school, and many had never even thought about archaeology as a possibility.
“They are really switched on and looking forward to starting the big dig.”
GUARD Archaeology will be on site in the Bridge of Tilt area from 10am-4pm each day, and will welcome any last-minute volunteers.
We need to see if there are any more burials