An ancient sacred centre in Moray?
Looking north from road, image shows the Carnyx find site (centre left) and small ridge (left). Taken in 2015 by Richard Webb and licensed for reuse under creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0 geograph.org.uk/photo/4444930,
This location is famous for the discovery of the Deskford carnyx (an Iron age war trumpet) around 1816. However, following an archaeological dig in the 1990s, Fraser Hunter and his team stated this site has a long history of ritual use. Perhaps starting in the mesolithic, certainly from the neolithic onwards, this place was used by humans for ritual and ceremony.
Hunter and colleagues detailed their research in the 2019 article Context for a carnyx: excavation of a long-lived ritual site at Leitchestown, Deskford, Moray, north-east Scotland . They report finds from the Mesolithic until c. AD 800–1200. They found evidence for pits being dug for deposits then filled in again in Neolithic times.
So why would this place in particular have such a long usage by humans? There must be something with the location which is hard to recognise with modern eyes. The site is beside the Burn of Deskford at the point where the small stream opens out into a valley, before taking a 90 degree turn and entering the sea at Cullen. There are hills on almost all four sides plus a small ridge created by glacial erosion between the site and the burn. The location has most likely always been boggy, so perhaps there’s something about the dead water of the bog and the living water of the burn?
Hunter, who describes the site as “enigmatic”, thinks that the ceremonial uses over time have no link but it seems much more likely (to me at least) that a sacred site would be re-used if it kept its wonder.
In fact, I wonder if there’s a sacred landscape here. Very nearby (a stone’s throw up the hill to the south), there’s a platform marking the ruins of what is thought to have been Inaltry Castle – only one massive wall remains. George Anderson Clarke wrote in his 1993 pamphlet ‘Deskford Parish: Loons, lairds, preachers and teachers’ “Excavations at Inaltry in 1788 uncovered a deep circular chamber thought to be a dry pit for holding prisoners, as in medieval castle dungeons.” Incidentally it was Clarke’s great great grandfather who found the carnyx, but my eyes lit up at the word “pit”, perhaps that might have been a Neolithic pit. Across from the modern road from the castle was a law hillock or cairn. At the top of the hill to the east, there were two stone circles (possibly RSCs) about 50 metres apart – Gaulcross south and Gaulcross north. They were both blown up by the farmer in the early 19th century. A Pictish hoard was discovered in the debris and when the area was excavated in the 2010s, more silver fragments were found. Clune Hill to the east has the Gallowes well and Cotton Hill to the south apparently used to be covered in cairns, although nothing remains. Ha’ Hillock is close by too.
Perhaps many places in Scotland when put under scrutiny would reveal just as many interesting human interventions, yet still I have to say I am intrigued both by the specific location of this site and its longevity of use.