Murray Cook column: Dumyat discoveries offer reminder of need to keep looking

The Stirling archaeologist muses this week on the steady stream of discoveries just waiting under the surface.

By Dr Murray Cook

As I sit at my desk writing these columns I often think of you dear reader (hopefully an s there!) and an apparent steady stream of new discoveries.

Do you ever question them?

How do I keep doing it? Who funds it? How do the public find out and so on?

The reason we find so much always puzzles me to but it’s because no one has ever looked before.

Hardly any archaeology is ever done so if you look in likely spots you’ll find stuff.

As to who funds it, well we’re all volunteers but lots of local trusts and people help with the expenses.

Last week it was Edinburgh University.

They’ve bought Drumbrae to the west of Dumyat to off set their carbon footprint and we were looking at the site of a roundhouse and a single cultivation terrace which is an artificial linear field on the south facing slope of a field.

But because no one else had looked since the 1950s we found an awful lot more, a whole series of ‘new’ terraces and what looks to be a burial cairn.

All a bit routine and mundane but new discoveries about how people lived and worked in the past: the simple building blocks of interpretation.

Perhaps a complete settlement or perhaps three different periods of activity, perhaps its connected to Dumyat?

We won’t know till we dig it, which is hopefully over the next few years.

When it’s done, we’ll formally publish it and install an interpretation board next to the site.

Of course, if you’d like to join us let me know m.jcookstirling35@gmail and I’ll add you to the email list!

Hope to see you next year.

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