Dighty Valley - Archaeology Data Service

It lies at the foot of and parallel to this 25 ft. beach, which
rises steeply from it. From this site seaward the ground is level for
some 500 ft, where the dunes commence. The soil is near sand, at
depth it is pure sand.
LANARKSHIRE
CRAWFORD From G. S. Maxwell
NS/954214. The examination of the Roman fort continued
for a two week period in July/August when much help was again
given by Lanarkshire Education Authority; pupils from schools
in the county formed the main digging force.
The course of the " berm-ditch " noticed in two previous years
was followed a little way but it neither produced any dated pottery
nor showed any sign of stopping, so that the nearby timber structure,
whose existence is made more sure by the discovery of two
more of its post-holes, still cannot be shown to be an early gatetower.
Digging in the centre of the fort to the east of the cobbled
street which might be the via principalis has revealed, a buttressed
building of stone whose construction is stouter than that of stone
buildings already discovered to the west. The cobble foundations
on which it rests cut through a thick layer of burnt material which
has been observed to cover the lower occupation level in the rest of
the fort.
A section cut through the southern defences showed that the
south rampart was very poorly preserved. Apparently made of turf
and of the same width as the east rampart, it had a narrow stone
foundation under its outer lip; there was no berm and, interestingly
enough, no " berm-ditch," but a step was visible in the outer face
of the ditch, as if a smaller early defence system had been replaced
by a larger one. The intervallum street attached to the rampart had
only one layer of construction, and at one point it was overlain by
a stone building of definite Antonine date.
One tiny piece of a Samian cup of possibly Flavian date was
discovered. Four coins were found, all in the lower levels; of these
two were minted in the second half of the first century AD.
The coins have been cleaned in the Hunterian Museum under
the supervision of Miss Anne Robertson. " Three of them have been
identified as—an As of Vespasian (AD. 71), a sestertius of Titus
under Vespasian (AD. 77/78), and an As of Domitian (AD. 86).
None of these bronze coins is very much worn, and it is possible
that any one of them might have been lost in the late first century
AD."
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