Page 8 - Leighton News October 2018

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Caer Digoll / Beacon Ring Excavations 2018

August 2018 saw the very first Quarter
archaeological exploration of the stone-age height
hill fort known as the Beacon Ring. of ring
Richard and Jack (right) worked on a border
carefully hand dug narrow section of the
ring border. Richard is pointing out the TRENCH 1 Old turf
strata of previous turf layers compressed Orange
over time. You can see their orange colours Layers
in the high definition pdf online.
Bottom
N Layer
for lab
TV AERIALS dating

TRENCH 2 Trench
middle
to be
cleared

At the time, there was still a small central strip of soil
to be removed but the lowest exposed level looked
almost like black tarmac—this was actually the most
compressed layer of vegetation at the bottom.
Samples from this layer are now back in the lab for
carbon dating which will establish the age of the fort.
Based on the 50m scale in the diagram, the ring
perimeter is about 580 metres —good going for early
man without the benefit of mechanical diggers.

Offa’s Dyke passes through the Beacon Ring and also the
ditch that defines the Leighton/Trelystan village boundary.

Neil Bayliss worked on the
south facing entrance—a
terrific lookout position but
as he pointed out, this was
an unusally wide access
point for a hill fort and
thefore would be be much
harder to protect.