Excavations undertaken in 2020 at William Grant & Sons Girvan Distillery at the Curragh in South Ayrshire revealed an Iron Age settlement where archaeologists discovered a rare enamelled bronze brooch, believed to have been placed in the foundations of a fortified roundhouse as a sacrifice to grant protection to the household.
The enamelled bronze brooch, thought to date from the late second century CE, may have been used in a foundation offerings ritual at the Iron Age fort, possibly as a votive sacrifice during the construction of the timber palisade around the roundhouse. According to The National, the brooch was recovered from the bottom of the foundation trench that held the timber palisade in place.
"It's difficult to say exactly why the brooch was deposited within the palisade trench, but we know that ritualised foundation offerings are observed across many cultures, typically enacted to grant protection to a household, and this is certainly a possibility here," said Jordan Barbour, who co-authored the report on the findings, according to BBC News.
The team of archaeologists discovered the remains of a timber roundhouse surrounded by a wooden palisade with a gated entranceway, likely the dwelling of a wealthy farming household. According to The National, the Iron Age settlement was situated at the top of a rocky plateau, with a steep slope to the immediate north, and the dwelling may have been sited here and enclosed with a timber palisade due to defensive concerns.
"These brooches were particularly popular among members of the Roman military forces, so it's likely that it came north of Hadrian's Wall on the cloak of a Roman soldier tasked with garrisoning the Empire's northernmost frontier," added Barbour.
The brooch is the only Roman artefact recovered from the site. "If the inhabitants had established regular trade with Roman Britain, we might expect to find a greater variety of Roman objects, but this is a solidly native context," stated Barbour.
He suggested that the brooch may have been obtained through ad hoc exchange with Roman troops operating north of Hadrian's Wall, or perhaps even taken in battle as a trophy. "There was no evidence that the brooch had been worn by a local Briton," he said, according to The National.
Conflict between the locals and Roman soldiers is likely to have been a recurring element of Rome's intermittent occupation of south-west Scotland.
Although there were no contemporary Roman forts nearby after the abandonment of the Antonine Wall earlier in the second century CE, an earlier first century CE Roman marching camp some two kilometres to the south-west attests to previous military presence in the area.
The brooch would have arrived in Scotland at about the time the Roman Empire was losing its grip on the south of the country. The Romans left Scotland around 210 CE but remained in Britain for a further 200 years.
Traces of even more ancient inhabitation were evidenced by the recovery of pottery dating to the early Neolithic period. During the early Neolithic period, a large timber monument was constructed at the site between 3700 and 3500 BCE.
The article was written with the assistance of a news analysis system.