Greentulloch,broch 180m NE of — Broch, Achnagoul. The broch is situated within an enclosure of an abandoned farmstead. It is about 17m in diameter and, as can be seen…

Cyclopean masonry

Greentulloch,broch 180m NE of

United Kingdom

DatedEst. 390 BCE–200 CE

Photo Claire Pegrum · CC BY-SA 2.0Source file on Wikimedia Commons

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Overview

About this site

Overview

Achnagoul, also called Greentulloch, is a site near Dunbeath in Caithness, Highland, Scotland, that contains a broch, a Clyde tomb and a standing stone. The broch is protected as a scheduled monument and is dated by typological estimate to between 390 BCE and 200 CE.

The broch lies in an abandoned farmstead in the valley of the Dunbeath River. The Clyde tomb stands 190 m north of another cairn, Achnagoul 1, and the standing stone lies north-east of the tomb.

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Where it sits in time

The site's dated range, placed against world reference points.

The scale is logarithmic: each step to the left is about ten times older than the last.

Est. 390 BCE–200 CEHow this date was established: Type comparisonTypical for this type

What this badge meansThe published range for this kind of monument in this region. It is not a date for this site.
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Greentulloch,broch 180m NE of

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Its entrance, with a surviving lintel and part of the wall, is preserved on the south-east side.

Achnagoul

Description

Sources for this section

The broch has a diameter of about 17.0 m. Its entrance, with a surviving lintel and part of the wall, is preserved on the south-east side. The remains of the broch form the core of a mound about 23.0 m in diameter and 1.5 m high. The mound probably consists largely of rubble from the broch and may contain further remains of the outer wall. The bank that bounds the mound on the south-west is probably a remnant of the outer defences.

The Clyde tomb, Achnagoul 2, is a heavily robbed cairn crossed by a destroyed field wall. It lies on a slight rise in a clearing and measures about 18 × 12 m and 1.2 m in height. A concave forecourt lies on the north-east. Its two outer stones and three further stones of the exedra stand up to 0.85 m above the level of the forecourt, and they remain in situ, as does one of the two portal stones. The top of the portal stone is 1.35 m above the floor of the unroofed chamber, which is entered from the middle of the exedra. A sill stone lies immediately behind the portal stone.

Each side of the double chamber is made of three slabs. The central slab is wedged against the dividing slab and overlaps its neighbours to support the side slabs. The dividing slab separates the chamber into two compartments, each about 0.8 m deep. The outer compartment is rectangular in plan and the inner one is trapezoidal. A narrow end slab closes the chamber. The stones on the south-east side seem to have been slightly displaced. A slab lying beneath the dividing slab may indicate that the floors of the compartments are paved.

The standing stone is oriented roughly north to south and stands on the crest of a low rise. It is about 1.5 m high and 1.2 m wide, and 0.8 m thick at ground level before it narrows to a flat tip 0.6 m wide. It has been suggested that the stone formed part of a circle, but irregularities in the immediate topography make this unlikely, and there is no evidence that stones were removed. Seven recumbent stones lie near it, and a survey showed that all eight stones lie on an ellipse measuring 63.0 × 88.0 m. A column-like stone 2.9 m long lies about 23.0 m to the south-east beside the fence. It is at least 0.4 m thick and tapers from 1.0 m wide to 0.7 m.

Context

Sources for this section

A broch is an Iron Age hollow-walled drystone tower found in Scotland, which holds more than 500 of them. There are approximately 571 candidate sites, concentrated in northern Scotland, with the densest groups in Caithness, Sutherland and the Northern Isles.