February 2021 Meeting

Thursday 18th February 2021
Warren Bailie (GUARD)
“Excavations at Dunragit, the prehistoric heart of Galloway”

An introduction by Trevor Cowie

The A75 links the Irish Sea ferry terminals at Stranraer and Cairnryan with the main UK motorway system at Gretna and is one of Scotland’s busiest trunk roads. One notorious traffic bottleneck used to be the village of Dunragit to the east of Stranraer but in 2008 construction of a bypass was given the go-ahead by Government. As usual with large infrastructure projects, extensive archaeological investigations were undertaken prior to and during the roadworks. These resulted in many significant new discoveries including several archaeological ‘firsts’ for SW Scotland: in fact, the wealth of archaeology revealed along the route led to the area being labelled the ‘Prehistoric Heart of Galloway’!

This month we look forward to hearing about the results of the work from Warren Bailie of GUARD Archaeology who will be giving an online presentation on ‘Excavations at Dunragit, the prehistoric heart of Galloway’ on Thursday 18 February, commencing at 7.30pm.

Warren’s presentation will focus on the results of the major archaeological findings from works carried out by GUARD between 2012 and 2013 in advance of the construction of the bypass. The area was already known to be archaeologically rich on account of the Neolithic timber enclosure complex originally revealed through aerial photography and partially investigated by Prof Julian Thomas of Manchester University between 1999 and 2002. The works on the bypass revealed that this landscape held much, much more. The archaeology included the earliest Mesolithic hut circle in south-west Scotland; a Neolithic posthole alignment possibly linking with the complex of timber enclosures just mentioned; three graves with Beaker period grave goods including rare jet jewellery; a Bronze Age funerary complex and an unenclosed Iron Age settlement. The post-excavation work has just been completed and a popular publication and monograph will be released next month.

Warren Bailie is the current Operations Manager for GUARD Archaeology where he has worked for almost 10 years, having worked for 7 years in commercial archaeology in Ireland prior to this. During his time here, he has been fortunate enough to have been involved with a variety of archaeological sites across Scotland. He has project managed works carried out in connection with two of our World Heritage sites - St Kilda and the Antonine Wall - and archaeological works in advance of development on several other major sites including Carnoustie in Angus (Neolithic and Bronze Age settlement and Late Bronze Age Hoard) and Partick Castle, Glasgow (Medieval/Post-Medieval remains). Warren’s talk on Dunragit provides an opportunity to look back at what was the first major project carried out under his direction in Scotland.

 

Interested in this or any of the other fascinating talks we have lined up until the Spring?

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