Tayside Fife Archaeol J 6

It was hoped that a parallel pair of pit alignments belonged to the pit-defined cursus tradition of Scotland, but the nature and date of the site remain uncertain. Discussion of pit-defined cursus monuments in Tayside places Milton of Rattray in context.

Excavation identified the remains of a cemetery, probably associated with the medieval hospital of Montrose, reputedly founded by King Alexander II as a leper hospital.

Excavations revealed the existence of a substantial cemetery around the City Churches precinct of Dundee. Around 200 inhumations and much disarticulated bone were recovered; their analysis has provided hitherto unavailable information about the demographic structure, health and nutrition of medieval Dundonians. A defensive ditch dug before the twelfth-century foundation of St Mary's Church was also discovered.

Excavation identified five phases of activity from at least the twelfth century to modern times, with traces of commercial and perhaps industrial activity as the market area of the High Street expanded. Evidence was uncovered of stake and wattle buildings on the northern frontage of the High Street, with the wooden sills of a temporary booth encroaching onto the street. The High Street had been narrowed since medieval times and its surface raised. The area may have been used for horticulture rather than habitation during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Includes

Excavations identified two burgage plots and their boundaries with five phases of activity, sealed under modern rubble. In the eastern plot was a sequence of three medieval stone buildings or rooms, with a hearth and water channels, perhaps industrial. In the late medieval period these rooms were converted into one large building, perhaps a byre. The western plot was garden until modern times.

Conservation and redisplay prompted an interdisciplinary study to elucidate the life story of the decorated cross-slab. It was probably made in the ninth century for a Pictish patron and sited originally near Strowan. There it was first associated with a pilgrimage cult of St Ronan and later used for punishment of offenders, who were put in iron jougs (collars) attached to the Cross. The Cross was moved to Crieff in the eighteenth century and set up in the market place there in 1852.

A group of wooden panels is described and discussed. The panels were made -- probably on the continent -- of eastern European oak in the early-sixteenth century. They presumably furnished a church for a brief period before the Reformation, when they were moved to a house in Skinnergate, Perth.

A preliminary guide to the identification of Russian lead seals from flax bales, which studies 233 seals found in fife, setting out the characteristics by which seals from different Russian towns can be recognised and indicating changes in design between the late-eighteenth and early-twentieth century.