Dunragit -- a non-megalithic cultural centre?

 

The landscape in which the excavations were concentrated

Location map, showing Dunragit with respect to the Stanraer and Cairnryan ports.

https://www.guard-archaeology.co.uk/DunragitBlog/Dunragit_monograph.pdf

Dunragit
The Prehistoric Heart of Galloway
By Warren Bailie
With Iraia Arabaolaza, Kenneth Brophy, Declan Hurl, Maureen Kilpatrick, Dave McNicol, Christine Rennie, Richard Tipping and Ronan Toolis

There are quite a few comments on social media today in relation to a new report on an archaeological dig at Dunragit, Galloway, Scotland, which has been in progress for over three years.  It's on the site of a new bypass road designed to improve traffic flow to the Cairnryan ferry port.  There were modest expectations before the dig started, but the archaeologists were surprised by the great wealth of material which was uncovered and analysed.  The link above will take you to a very comprehensive and beautifully presented report.

From the Conclusions:

Prior to these works, it was no secret that Dunragit was home to a complex Neolithic palisaded enclosure and cursus complex and an adjacent Bronze Age, ‘Silbury Hill style’ Droughduil Mound, both explored by Julian Thomas 1999-2003 (2015). Not acknowledged at that time was the likely contemporary timber complex and post alignments at Drumflower, around 0.5 km WNW of Dunragit, hinting at an even more widespread ceremonial prehistoric landscape, indicative of a general lack of engagement with crop marks in Scotland’s archaeology (Brophy 2006, 14–17). This assumes the similar layout and scale of Drumflower indicates contemporaneity with the palisades of Dunragit. The construction of these monuments would have required a concerted effort from a community, and represents a considerable investment of time, labour, and resources. Dunragit and the landscape around it had great value to those who resided here and given the scale of the monuments, and the inherent conspicuous nature of the structures, one can imagine a much wider community congregated there for the ceremonial purpose they were built for. But no-one could have predicted the wealth of significant archaeological sites to be found along much of the bypass route.

We discovered a remarkable number of previously unknown archaeological sites within what was a narrow 20 m road corridor. These investigations suggest that this part of the Galloway coastline was at the heart of successive prehistoric occupations over some eight millennia. We discovered evidence of some of Southwest Scotland’s first settlers dating to the Mesolithic period, while a distinctive piece of worked flint at West Challoch suggests that people may have been present at this location even earlier than previously thought, in the Upper Palaeolithic around 14,000 years ago at the end of the last Ice Age. Also discovered were post alignments of Neolithic date and early Bronze Age burial pits with grave goods such as jet jewellery, pottery vessels, and flint tools. This was followed by a complex cremation cemetery with pottery and aceramic cremations within and around two small barrows, and a series of mainly Bronze Age burnt mounds dotted along the lower lying areas of the route. The latest prehistoric site uncovered was an unenclosed Iron Age settlement, at the time of writing unique in Galloway, at least in terms of sites investigated.

The results of the investigations along the Dunragit Bypass have not resolved the full complexity and extent of archaeology present here, but have certainly shed some light on the rich prehistory of this landscape. The route of the bypass provided a linear snapshot of what archaeology survives, but in each case, it has also demonstrated that the true extent of each of the archaeological sites remains unknown. There is therefore yet more to discover of the Mesolithic site, the Neolithic posthole alignments, the Bronze Age cemetery complex and the Iron Age settlement, each site extending beyond the limits of the investigations carried out here. This was by any measure a major archaeological project, but it must be acknowledged here that we have only scratched the surface in terms of the full extent of the prehistoric activity that must be present.

The works carried out at Dunragit highlight the importance of archaeological investigations in the lead up to and during ground breaking works for developments such as this. Although desk-based assessments and records of previous investigations provide a back-drop for expected findings on a project, there can be no substitute for visual inspection by experienced archaeologists in collaboration with relevant specialists to recognise and then address significant archaeology to the appropriate standard. Not least the subsoil presented a phenomenon whereby archaeological deposits not apparent on initial inspection, revealed themselves over subsequent days through weathering out. Although this had been observed by the excavators elsewhere, the extent to which this occurred at Dunragit was notable. It does bring into focus the open and shut nature of trial trench evaluations across the country, where the subsoil barely sees the light of day before being backfilled; this does raise the question: should we be incorporating ‘weathering out’ time into all archaeological investigations? As the work progressed the excavators became more and more familiar with the subsoil and the elusive nature of the archaeology, particularly in the free- draining gravel areas present across much of the route. The team at Dunragit had to adapt and innovate in investigating and recovering, in some cases sensitive, and rare items under the pressures of the construction programme, while recording the archaeology to the level it deserved.

There is a lot to absorb in the Report, but a few of the things one takes from it are as follows:

1.   As lead author Warren Bailie acknowledges, the discovery of this site owed much to serendipity.  There was no massive megalithic structure here to act as a focus for attention, and the finds in this somewhat innocuous landscape can only hint at what is still out there, across the British landscape, waiting to be discovered.

2.  The history of settlement at this locality spans about 14,000 years, from the Palaeolithic through to the present day.  The prehistoric time-span of the features found is around 8,000 years.  This should not surprise anybody, and the intermittent occupation of "favourable" sites is something we should expect, as my colleagues and I have consistently argued with respect to Craig Rhosyfelin, Carn Goedog and Waun Mawn.  This is exactly what is shown in the radiocarbon evidence from these sites, even though MPP pretends that the only noteworthy activities were those going on in the period 5,500 - 5,000 yrs BP -- associated with his "stones for Stonehenge" obsession.

3.  Particularly noteworthy here in this corner of Galloway is the casual disregard for stone monoliths or megalithic structures of any type.  Plenty of pits have been examined, but none of them appear to have been stone holes.  They had all sorts of purposes, but the main one seems to have been the holding of vertical posts.  So at exactly the time when MPP wants people to be obsessed with bluestones and other large monoliths of sarsen, to the extent of dragging them for 200km or more to Stonehenge as the embodied spirits of the ancestors, here in Galloway, where "Scottish" and "Irish" cultural traits must have been familiar, there was complete disinterest.  Cultural preferences went off in another direction, and there must be a lesson in that...........

4.  The discoveries here reinforce what Gordon Barclay and Kenny Brophy wrote last year about "interpretive inflation" and the Stonehenge mythos.  They argue that there were, in the Neolithic and the Bronze Age, other centres and other "cultural crossroads" that developed quite independently of what was going on on Salisbury Plain.  On the basis of what has been uncovered here at Dunragit and its associated sites, we might as well assume that the locals had no idea that Stonehenge even existed.

5.  That having been said, we must beware of attaching "artificial significance" to this new site.  It just happens to have been found, and it happens to be complex and interesting.  That does not necessarily mean that it is important.  It may well be that somewhere else, just a few miles away, is the REALLY important site -- currently under the turf or buried by a peat bog, unrecognised and unloved.