Fin Cop Hillfort
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The Peak District National Park is the second most visited national park in the world, and is home to some of the most imposing, and yet little-known prehistoric enclosures in Britain; Fin Cop hillfort overlooking Monsal Dale is one such monument. Longstone Local History Group (LLHG) made a successful bid to the Heritage Lottery Fund to record and excavate the hillfort, trained and assisted by Archaeological Research Services Ltd (ARS Ltd). Desk-based assessment, geophysical survey and an in-depth topographic survey were undertaken as the initial phases of the project, ensuring that a rounded understanding of the site could be arrived at. Following this, in the summer of 2009, LLHG along with staff members from ARS Ltd, children from Longstone School and other volunteers spent three weeks conducting excavations on the hillfort itself.
During the first week the school children helped to excavate a number of test pits that produced over 1700 chipped stone artefacts. These artefacts represented unexpected evidence that the summit of Fin Cop had been a place where Mesolithic hunter-gatherers extracted chert, which naturally occurred in the Limestone bedrock, and manufactured stone tools from it.
When a number of sherds of prehistoric pottery were recovered from within the ploughsoil, the decision was made to expand one of the pits into a larger trench. This trench uncovered over 200 sherds of pottery, which predominantly dated to the Late Bronze Age-Early Iron Age, though some probable Neolithic artefacts were also discovered.
The main focus of the excavation was a trench that ran directly across the hillfort ramparts. It was hoped that this location would help to reveal more about the hillfort's construction and history. The two metre deep, rock-cut ditch was fully excavated with a great deal of effort from everyone involved. Unexpectedly, the trench revealed a causeway across the ditch and what is thought could be a blocked-up entrance way. Behind the ditch was a rubble bank that had been faced with semi-dressed stones and there was also evidence for a second rampart adding extra fortification to the north-eastern circuit of the defences. During the excavation of the ditch, the skeleton of a pregnant woman was uncovered amongst the jumbled stone of the collapsed rampart. It became evident that she had been thrown into the ditch as the stone wall of the hillfort was being pushed in, while specialist analysis of the bones revealed her to have been around 21-30 years of age when she died.
What was uncovered during the course of the Fin Cop project has undoubtedly enriched our understanding of not only this site, but also of the hillforts of the Peak District as a whole, and as further analysis and dating is undertaken, more of the story can be told.
The second season of excavations will be running from 5th July to the 6th August 2010. If you would like to volunteer then please email using this link.
The reports detailing the various stages of the Fin Cop project can be downloaded by clicking on the links below:
Fin Cop Desk-Based Assessment
Fin Cop Earthwork Survey Report
Fin Cop Geophysical Survey Report
Fin Cop Excavation Archive Report
To download a copy of the Fin Cop Project Leaflet click on the image below:
For coverage of the discoveries in the wider media click on the following links:
BBC News Website
Derbyshire Times
Buxton Advertiser
Matlock Mercury
The Star
A video of the Fin Cop story by Great Longstone Youth Group can be seen here.
To see a map of the hillforts of the Peak District click here.