In 1974, Professor Bill Hanson, then a postgraduate student at Manchester, travelled to Glasgow to visit Croy Hill, where the area south of the known fort was threatened by quarrying, with a view to undertaking the excavation of the area. Full transparency: the reviewer arranged for the excavation to take place and invited Bill Hanson to direct the work.
Croy Hill is one of the smaller forts on the Antonine Wall, occupied for about 20 years following the start of construction of this new frontier in a.d. 142. Sir George Macdonald undertook some excavations there between the two World Wars, but the site had remained untouched since.
The primary aims of the project were the examination of that part of the known small enclosure lying under the fort that projected into the area threatened by quarrying and investigation of the wider area for possible remains of a civil settlement, an element of the Antonine Wall under-investigated. The excavation was not the easiest to undertake in view of the undulating nature of the ground and the proximity of the quarry and its waste occupying part of the area planned for the excavation.
Macdonald had located the small enclosure with an annexe underneath the fort and concluded that it dated to the governorship of Agricola (a.d. 77–83). Hanson's investigation demonstrated that it dated to the Antonine period on the basis of the early Antonine pottery in the enclosure ditch. The enclosure therefore is broadly contemporary with that found under the fort at Bar Hill, the next fort to the west along the Wall, and re-dated to the early Antonine period by Lawrence Keppie (Glasgow Archaeological Journal 12 (1985), 49–81). These two excavations have removed from the historic narrative two potential candidates for Agricola's praesidia on the Forth–Clyde isthmus and replaced them by two possible survey points for the laying out of the Antonine Wall.
The excavation demonstrated that the main focus of the civil settlement lay to the west of the fort within that part of the site in state care. However, a timber building projected into the area excavated, and a track led south to the road that by-passed the fort. This track was defined by ditches which contained much material washed downhill from the civil settlement, representing some 75 per cent of all the finds recovered from site. The by-pass road was of at least two phases and to each side lay fields, one of which contained a pottery kiln and another a cremation burial.
While exploring the area, Hanson noted a platform to the west of the fort and persuaded me to allow him to investigate it in spite of my disbelief that anything would be found there. Hanson located a fortlet attached to the rear of the Antonine Wall rampart, demonstrating its primary date, and a surrounding ditch. In the absence of any threat to this part of the site, no archaeological features were excavated, other than two ditch sections and the point of intersection of the ramparts of the fortlet and the Wall, though dating evidence was provided by the Antonine pottery.
The archaeological material is presented in a series of chapters, each focusing on a major element, the pre-fort enclosure, fortlet, roads, land divisions, and prehistoric remains, with the basic evidence presented followed by a list of relevant finds, interpretation and analogies and supported by plans and photographs. The report on the structures is followed by the specialist reports on the finds, including fragments of a rare terracotta face-mask and pottery probably made at Croy, all adding an important collection of artefacts to the Antonine Wall material. The results of the excavation are drawn together in the conclusions.
Hanson's excavation at Croy Hill is one of the most important undertaken to date on the Antonine Wall. In spite of the relatively small area of the civilian space outside the fort investigated, it remains the most substantial such examination on that frontier. Although other sites along the Wall have produced evidence for field systems, this is the most extensively excavated. The pre-fort enclosure has been re-dated and a fortlet found and investigated. The excavation of the by-pass road, a distinctive feature of the Antonine Wall, is the most intensive to date. Further, the excavation relates to the Antonine Wall, a World Heritage Site. It therefore seems unfortunate to this reviewer that the report has only been published online in Scottish Archaeological Internet Reports rather than in hard copy in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, in spite of its size.
