View SE over Ardifuar Iron Age dun, Argyll and Bute, Scotland, UK: a circular stone-built fort with a diameter of around 19m & walls up to thick.
View SE over Ardifuar Iron Age dun, Argyll and Bute, Scotland, UK: a circular stone-built fort with a diameter of around 19m & walls up to thick surviving up to 3m high. This galleried dun or semibroch has features often seen in broch towers. At ground level the wall contains mural cells & a staircase leading to upper levels where the walls contain a gallery. The entrance passage at the WSW has door checks but no holes or slots to take a wooden draw beam. The paved passage is unusually wide (cattle may have been taken inside the 'round' or 'cashel') & has a corbelled side cell. The scarcement ledge running around the inner face of the wall probably supported features of timber buildings circling the central space. Excavations in 1904 identified two main periods of occupation in the C2ndAD & again in the early Middle Ages. The dun is situated beside the Ardifuir Burn less than half a mile inland from a sheltered anchorage on the N shore of Loch Crinan: a non-defensive position on the valley floor overlooked on three sides. A steading has been built close by and the fort used for farming purposes.
Size: 3771px × 2673px
Location: Ardifuar Dun, Slockavulin, Kilmartin, Argyll and Bute, Scotland, UK
Photo credit: © Mick Sharp / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
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