Just north of the large camps of Ardoch the Roman Gask Project dug in 1997 a ditch section through a possible tower site, identified from an Air photograph. The very shallow, saucer-shaped ditch made it clear that this was not a military installation. When preparing the site for publication a number of antiquarian records became available that mention cists and stone-lined inhumations in the direct vicinity of the feature, and enhancing and reprinting of the air photograph showed the remains of several other possible ring features of similar size in the open area north and east of Black Hill Wood.
While these features get very close to the Ardoch camps, none have yet been detected on the inside of the large camp. This may suggest, that when building this the Romans took care to avoid the barrowfield, or less likely, because of the lack of square barrows within the barrowfield, that the local population respected the boundary of the surviving Roman camp. If the former is the case, this would make an interesting addition to our understanding of the relations between Romans and the indigenous population, although it may not so much reflect a respect for somebody else’s graves as more a decision of convenience to stay out of an area that would offer only problems to anybody wanting to pitch tents there.
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