The Use and Reuse of Stone Circles
Page 10
Elsewhere in Scotland gaming counters are common on Roman military sites, though generally in low numbers (e.g. Birrens: four glass paste counters along with five stone counters and a stone board for ludus latrunculorum (Anderson 1896, 192; Robertson 1975, 100–103, 135–37); Strageath (Price 1988, 200–201); Elginhaugh (Price and Worrell 2007, 454–55, 469–70); Camelon: six white and six blue glass counters (Anderson 1901, 397); Bearsden: 13 glass paste counters of various colours, along with several ceramic and stone pieces and a fragment of a ludus board (Breeze forthcoming; Hall 2007, illus. 7)). The largest assemblage comes from the Roman fort at Newstead, Roxburghshire, where there are to date a total of 176 counters, the majority glass paste (156 of them black and white) and the remainder bone and stone (Curle 1911, 338–39, pl. XCIII; Hoffmann forthcoming).
Gaming counters are rarer finds from Iron Age sites. Roman glass examples are known inter alia from Buchylvie, Stirlingshire (Hunter 1998, 337), Buston Crannog, Ayrshire (Hall 2007, no. 24), and a native settlement near the Roman forts at Camelon which produced single examples of white and blue counters (Proudfoot 1980, 120). The presence of blue and white glass counters in both Roman and Iron Age contexts at Camelon certainly speaks of an interaction but not necessarily its nature: was this a transfer of gaming skills or a different kind of exchange, perhaps of items with a ritual, amuletic element?
Gaming counters are also known in other materials. The hillfort of Traprain Law, East Lothian, produced at least 39 glass, stone and ceramic examples (Curle and Cree 1916, 128, fig. 38; Curle 1920, figs 11, 18 and 22; Cree and Curle 1922, 231, fig. 27), while there is a group of 11 sandstone discs recovered from various parts of the broch site at Leckie, Stirlingshire (Hunterian Museum, unpublished; see MacKie 1982 and Macinnes 1984 for site background); the smaller examples are a close match to the schist counter from the recent Waulkmill group.
The two groups of counters and pebbles from Waulkmill do not indicate a single, uniform burial rite. The 2012 group lay in the centre of the cist ‘in a compact group’, suggesting to the excavators that they may have been in a bag. Such cloth or leather bags are rare survivals and more commonly inferred, as with the supposed bag from the Grange Road, Winchester burial (Biddle 1967, 231; Cool 2008, 106). Others come from Pins Knoll, Dorset, in which 20 counters, found in the crook of an arm of a teenage burial, are presumed to have been in a bag (Cool 2008, 108); and Ravenglass Roman fort, Cumbria, where a total of 126 bone and glass counters of four types were found in a barrack block destroyed by fire in the late second–early third century (Potter 1979, 75–76).
Figure 3.25. The stone ‘gaming pieces’ found in 2012 at Waulkmill (NMS).
Passages in Ovid and other classical writers indicate that both the different types of piece used in ludus latrunculorum and the opposing sides were indicated by different colours of glass (Turner 1979, 77; various references are drawn together in Balsdon 1969, 157); it is noteworthy that in the 1898 find there is a division between glass and stone, and then further distinction by colour. The composition of the 2012 Waulkmill group is less certain in suggesting a primary gaming purpose; the use-wear supports this but does not suggest they were a coherent group in origin, and they may represent a gathering of amulets, items deemed to have special qualities, either because they were a conduit for supernatural or magical agency or because they carried a significant memory of the deceased. Robert Stevenson (1967, 143) characterised such items as ‘ “objets trouvées”, valued as conferring prestige or good luck by reason of uniqueness, aesthetic appeal or through symbolizing a virtue or desired attribute’. He borrowed the description from Kenneth Oakley’s study (1965, 10, 117) of the folklore around fossils and applied it to a Roman Iron Age cache of 50 natural stones and a dozen artefacts from an otherwise empty burial cist at Cairnhill, Monquhitter, Aberdeenshire (Anderson 1902; Curle 1932). One of the Waulkmill stones is a small, egg-like pebble of spotted quartzite, naturally coloured with blue veins and red speckles. There were two such eggs, differently coloured, in the Monquhitter deposit. Stevenson (1967) suggested these were artificially shaped to enhance the natural appeal of their colouring. The shape, size and striking colouring of the Waulkmill ‘egg’ links it with this class of egg-like amulets (the two examples from Cairnhill already cited, two examples from Traprain and one from Bu Sands, Orkney; Hunter 1993, 331–33). It can also be compared to the painted pebbles known from northern Scotland (Ritchie 1972). Cool (2008, 108) proposes an amuletic function for some grave-deposited gaming pieces, especially when associated with rather random-looking assortments of other objects.
In contrast, the previously discovered group of 12 counters from Tarland (which may preserve elements of a set of two sides, one of glass and one of stone) were found ‘lying at regular intervals…’. This suggests that they preserved an element of the layout of the pieces, possibly on a board. It is not easy to know if the layout of board games in the grave was a symbolic funerary rite or an accurate reflection of a stage of play: a key discussion point in the analysis of the maplewood example from the Doctor’s Grave, Stanway, Essex (Schädler 2007, 359–75; Crummy 2007, 352–59). In the broadly contemporary double burial from Knowth, Co. Meath, Ireland, male twins were decapitated and buried head-to-toe. With them were buried a row of 13 bone pegged pieces and 21 stone pieces, along with three bone dice (Hall and Forsyth 2011, 1328–30; Eogan and Weekes 2012, 23–26). They may have been laid out on a board but no trace of it survives. It may be that each group of pieces represents a separate set owned by each of the dead twins or it may be that the pieces were part of a single unity – a double-sided board for playing two different games, XII scripta and ludus latrunculi. The Roman cemetery of Gloucester provides a further example of a double burial (Cool 2008, 105–10). A set of 43 bone and glass counters and two bone dice were found in a cremation urn (along with a melon bead and a scrap of iron). Analysis of the bone revealed that two individuals were buried in the urn. A mid-first century AD date makes it broadly comparable with Knowth and Stanway.
Sometimes boards and pieces could be deposited in a grave without an obvious layout. There are three further gaming burials from Stanway. One comprised a probable oak board with copper alloy bindings but no playing pieces in burial chamber BF6, and the second comprised a single glass counter in Chamber CF42 (Crummy 2007, 120 and fig. 73). The third is the so-called Warrior’s Grave (from the presence of a spear and shield), which included the remains of a folding maplewood board with copper alloy fittings (including handles), and playing pieces grouped together nearby (Crummy 2007, 186–90). The pieces comprised 11 blue and nine white glass counters. The numbers are closely comparable to the numbers from Waulkmill, though the Stanway report suggests more counters may have been present than were recorded (Crummy 2007, 172). A Flavian period burial from Winchester was placed in a grave laid out for a meal on a large slate trencher (a hitherto unrecognised fragment of such a trencher from the fort at Holt was published as a possible gaming board; Grimes 1930, 128, no. 35); beside it was a closely-gathered group of 18 (black, white and blue) glass counters and various other trinkets (all presumed to have been in a bag; Biddle 1967, 231, 243–45).
There is a general lack of uniformity in sets: British examples range from 1–126 across burial and non-burial contexts (Cotton 2001a–b; Schädler 2007, 366–67, tables 85 and 86), while a grave from Perugia (Italy) contained 816 glass counters (in three colours) and 16 rectangular bone counters (Turner 1979, 78; Balsdon 1969, 157). This variation in part reflects taphonomic conditions and disturbance, but also the dynamics of the burial rites practiced, including an amuletic function (cf. Cool 2008, 108), individual and communal possession of gaming pieces, and the different sizes of board, including 8 × 7, 14 × 13 and 16 × 13 cells (see Turner 1979, 78; Dunwell and Ralston 1996, 562, 565 and illus. 26; Grimes 1930, 131, no. 12). It seems a reasonable deduction that groupings of around 9–13 counters reflect a set of pieces that were the possession of a single player.
There is no scientif
ic dating of the most recent Waulkmill gaming burial but the radiocarbon dating of the cremated bone deposits from nearby provide a mid-second to late fourth century range, which is consistent with the broad cultural dating of both Waulkmill gaming sets. Based on an analysis of sets found in England, Cool suggests the glass counters had significantly declined in their usage by the late second century (Cool et al. 1995, table 125; Cool 2008, 105).
The Waulkmill burials in context: Iron Age burial traditions in north-east Scotland
Fraser Hunter
A striking feature of the Waulkmill discoveries is not simply the presence of artefacts in the graves, but the presence of graves at all. Whimster’s (1981) survey recorded only two possible Iron Age graves in Aberdeenshire – the early Waulkmill finds, and another old discovery at Sundayswells near Torphins, where a pot of Late Bronze Age or Iron Age type was found in a cist (Simpson 1946). There has been no published update, but ongoing data collation by the writer has revealed no new discoveries and only one further antiquarian find – what may have been a chariot burial from Ballindalloch (formerly Banffshire, now Aberdeenshire; Wilson 1851, 456–57; Carter et al. 2010, 57). Formal burial was effectively unknown in the northeast at the time: even by the sparse standards of the Scottish Iron Age, the area has a notable lack of burials. The marked contrast to the plentiful Beaker burials indicates this is more than just a preservation issue. Only with the square barrow burial tradition, beginning in the late or post-Roman Iron Age, did burial become a regular phenomenon of the area once more, although other parts of Iron Age Scotland saw occasional burials, including the neighbouring area of Angus (e.g. Dunbar and Maldonado 2012, 75–76; Maldonado 2013, 4–6). Burial was always rare, though, with cremation even more elusive than inhumation. All this marks the Waulkmill discoveries as exceptional. However, elements do find wider parallel. The suggestion that grave 2 was infilled in stages fits the complexity of Iron Age burial rites. In the small Scottish corpus, it is noteworthy how often there is evidence of something beyond a ‘simple’ inhumation burial, with cists often reopened to take a second occupant (most obviously in the large multiple cist at Lochend, Dunbar; but there are other examples of two or more bodies in a grave such as Moredun, Midlothian; Longworth 1966; Whimster 1981, 414). The presence of only a token amount of cremated bone in the central pit mirrors similar habits with unburnt bone, where the body was often fragmented and parts used in different rituals (Shapland and Armit 2012). One wonders how many of the rarely diagnostic fragments of burnt bone from settlements might come from similar processes? Only on the settlement of Phantassie in East Lothian, far to the south, has cremated human bone been identified in domestic middens (Lelong and MacGregor 2007, 195–97). It raises the question of whether this was a more widespread practice, and perhaps offers one reason why Iron Age burial rites are so elusive.
The chronology of the Waulkmill finds is not well-defined. The two recent inhumations did not produce material for scientific dating, and typological and technical study suggests only broad date brackets. The copper alloys do not show clear evidence of containing recycled Roman metal in the form of heightened zinc levels, but this absence need not imply they are pre-Roman; we do not know how extensively Roman metal was reused in north-east Scotland. As discussed, a number of strands suggest a third century AD date for the 1898 burial. The apparently separate later find offers less scope for dating. The gaming counters were pebbles, which are not diagnostic (though the use of gaming pieces suggests a Roman Iron Age date). The miniature projecting-bellied cauldron remains enigmatic. Miniature cauldrons are found in both later Iron Age and Roman contexts (Stead 1998, 115–17, 122; Kiernan 2009, 169–72), but most are hemispherical. The only other projecting-bellied example comes from Ancaster (Lincs), a stray find from a sand quarry (Petch 1958, 99–101). The projecting-bellied form in Britain and Ireland has first century AD origins and ran into the late Roman period (Joy 2014, 331–32; Hawkes 1951, 179–89). Thus, while few of the finds are well-dated, none are inconsistent with a Roman Iron Age date; indeed all could be later Roman Iron Age, though this cannot be demonstrated. One noteworthy implication is that the inhumations (dated by finds) and cremations (by radiocarbon) could be contemporary.
The grave goods are an unusual assemblage: while brooches are regular finds with inhumations and the spiral rings can also be paralleled, the cauldron and gaming pieces are found in no other Scottish burials. The same is true of the dagger. Study of old and new finds has revealed a cluster of daggers in northern Scotland (Cruickshanks in prep.), but this is the first Scottish example from a burial. Strictly speaking, this is a weapon burial (Hunter 2005), though the surviving fragment is more a stiletto than the rather grander weaponry one associates with the term. It is unfortunate that so little of it is preserved, but the organic traces point to a decorative horn handle.
Discussion of the Iron Age phase: a context for Roman finds on Deeside
Fraser Hunter
Roman material is notably sparse in central Aberdeenshire in contrast to neighbouring areas. There is a strong cluster of finds south of the Mounth in Angus and Perthshire, and another along the Moray Firth coast, but Deeside has produced very little (Hunter 2007b, fig. 4; updated in Hunter forthcoming). The only finds from settlement sites are a single denarius of Nerva and a melon bead from Castle Newe, near Strathdon, and a sherd of second century samian from Tillydrone in Aberdeen (Robertson 1970, 224; MacGregor 1976, no. 239; C. Wallace and A. Cameron pers. comm.). Stray finds are few: most of the coins (e.g. Robertson 1983) are unlikely to be ancient losses, and recent metal-detecting has produced very few brooches or other artefacts in comparison to other areas (though a second century military belt mount from near Tap o’Noth, Rhynie is an unusual find, since imported militaria are otherwise rare in Roman Iron Age Scotland; Curtis and Hunter 2006). A series of denarius hoards from the coastal strip indicate the area participated in the politics preceding the Severan campaigns (Hunter 2007b; 2009), but none come from inland areas. Yet, despite their rarity, there are some striking finds. Two of the three intact Roman glass vessels from Scotland come from Aberdeenshire: a late first/early second century conical jug from a deposit with glass beads at Brackenbraes, Turriff, and a mid-first century AD perfume flask from Loch Kinord (Ingemark 2014, 112, 121–22). From Stoneywood, close to Aberdeen, comes a very unusual bronze vessel hoard: an unfinished dipper/strainer pair (Curtis and Hunter 2006), while three gold coins (otherwise very rare finds) come from the area: an aureus of Vespasian from Port Elphinstone, near Inverurie; a solidus of Constantius (I or II, AD 293–361) from Leochel-Cushnie, southwest of Alford; and one of Honorius from near the Meikle Loch of Slains, close to Sands of Forvie on the coast (Bland and Loriot 2010, 69, 294–95, nos 703, 704, 706). And then there are the Waulkmill finds.
Before turning to these, we should consider some source-critical issues. Excavation of Iron Age sites has been very limited in the area in recent years and has focused on hillforts, which were mostly abandoned in the Roman Iron Age. The major later prehistoric open settlement at Kintore was similarly unoccupied during this period (Cook and Dunbar 2008). Antiquarian work produced very few Roman finds, in marked contrast to the situation to the south in ‘southern Pictland’ between the Mounth and the Tay, where finds come from a number of souterrain excavations (Wainwright 1963), and more spectacularly from excavations of broch sites at Hurly Hawkin and Castle Craig, Auchterarder (Taylor 1982; James 2011, 144–45; 2012, 142–43). North of the Mounth there are no such obviously spectacular sites. Finds such as massive armlets probably mark some of the powerful people in the area, and a number were deposited on settlements, but these sites are architecturally unremarkable compared to southern brochs. The armlets also show that more Roman material was around than we see: four of the six which have been analysed reused Roman metal (Tate et al. n.d.). Given that these are a distinctive product of the area, Roman material was clearly available for the melting pot.
From parallels to other areas and the striking
nature of single finds it must be assumed that we currently have a flawed picture of Roman objects in the area: the finds from burials and hoards make it likely there was material in circulation on settlement sites. Yet the disparity with neighbouring areas is striking, even if we seek to qualify the face-value impression. It seems inland Aberdeenshire was less well-supplied with Roman material than ‘southern Pictland’ (which had a more direct link to the Roman world, as it lay within the active campaigning zone) or the Moray Firth (which I suspect was supplied directly by sea). Aberdeenshire was different. The pattern of datable material is also interesting. The only certainly first century piece is the Loch Kinord unguent bottle, and this is notably early: indeed it may be one of the rare pre-Flavian pieces from Scotland (and thus pre-dating direct military engagement; Ingemark 2014, 251; Hunter 2007c, 22). There are coins struck in the first century (a denarius of Nerva and aureus of Nero) but these could easily be second century losses. Other finds fall more certainly into the second century: the Tillydrone samian, the Rhynie belt mount and perhaps the Stoneywood vessels. Thus for the period of first Roman contact in the later first century we have no certain finds. This is in contrast to ‘southern Pictland’ and parts of southern Scotland, where finds cluster at power centres (Macinnes 1984). If the focus of Roman campaigning leading up to the battle of Mons Graupius did indeed take place in Aberdeenshire, this absence of finds reflecting ‘friendly’ Roman links is unsurprising, but the location of the battle remains a hotly-debated area (e.g. Maxwell 1990; Fraser 2005).