Dun Ardtreck

Dun Ardtreck was excavated by Euan W. MacKie in 1964-5 as part of an exercise to establish the development of the broch.^[1] It had been built in two stages: a roughly level platform was constructed and on this was set the galleried wall.^[1] Charcoal from the platform was radiocarbon dated to 115 BC.^[1] The first phase of occupation seems to have been very short and it appears to have ended in violence and destruction.^[1] The second phase was dated from the pottery finds to the middle of the 2nd century AD.^[1] The finds from this period included iron tools, bronze ornaments and glass ring-heads as well as Roman Samian ware pottery sherds and a piece of a Roman bead.^[1]

Dun Ardtreck is a D-shaped structure with the straight side formed by the edge of a high cliff, along which a narrow wall ran. The thick, drystone wall, the design of the entrance passage, with its door-checks, and the intramural gallery suggests that the building once had the high, hollow wall of the broch towers but had suffered serious demolition at one stage. There are two doorways into the wall gallery, one of which is at a place where the gallery widens, as if to accommodate a stone stair, but no traces of this remain. The height of the wall at the cliff edge is about 6 inches but it rises to several feet at the entrance passage, which faces inland; the structure was built on the rock surface sloping inland from the cliff edge, a rubble platform forming the foundation..

The primary occupation of the dun was a relatively thin floor deposit inside, on which some burnt material lay, implying destruction by fire.

• Media related to Dun Ardtreck at Wikimedia Commons