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CLAN COURIER Wildcat breeding, rare woollen knits and brazen property developers [ARCHAEOLOGY]
CAN YOU DIG IT? YES, YOU CAN Volunteers in a community archaeology project have helped unearth previously unknown details about life on the Threave Estate near Castle Douglas thousands of years ago. The Galloway Glens community archaeology project ‘Can You Dig It’ carried out a 10-day dig on the National Trust for Scotland’s Threave Garden and Estate in the summer of 2019. Though lots of discoveries were made at the time – including a lead shot from the 16th-18th century and some flints from the late Neolithic or Early Bronze Age period – it’s what’s been uncovered since that’s been truly revelatory. Some of the carbonised material found during the dig was sent away for radiocarbon dating and has been dated to between AD 75 to 214, confirming that humans lived here as far back as the Iron Age period. However, the volunteers also unearthed a tiny burnt hazelnut shell, dated to between 8,547 and 8,312 BC – meaning that people who lived and hunted here may well have been among the first to repopulate the country following the last Ice Age.
6 Scotland
