DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.22272#0156
138
glasgow archaeological society.
if at any one point the depth is ever so much as 20 feet. The
average depth cannot have been more than 12 feet.
Some writers have suggested that the ditch, as originally
made, was filled with water. But the nature of its construction,
and the absence of any effort to keep either the bottom or the
top of the banks at one level for any distance, are fatal to the
supposition, which may be dismissed as pure nonsense.
6. On the Nature of the Outer Mound.
It is clear that the earth duo- out in making: the fosse did
not form the vallum, but was laid out on the outer or northern
side of the fosse. This is demonstrated by the fact that when
a section is examined it is found that the cubic contents of
the ditch, at the place where the section was made, answer
very nearly to the corresponding cubic content of the outer
mound or heap at the same place after the necessary allowance
is made for the expansion of earth firmly packed naturally
before the ditch was made, but loosened and expanded by being
dug out.
The term " outer mound " is perhaps scarcely the most satis-
factory of names. What we have so designated is a formless
irregular heap—irregular, that is, in the sense that it has not
any one type or shape throughout. Yet even in this seeming
irregularity, there is, roughly speaking, a rule. There are, in
the main, two shapes, the flat and the heaped-up, and the
adoption of these respectively appears to a considerable extent
to have been governed by the nature of the levels of the
ground at the various points. Thus, in parts at Bonnymuir,
where the levels of the north bank and of the south bank
of the ditch were not greatly different, the flat shape has
been adopted, and the earth is spread with a surface so broad
as to make it not a mound but a mere outspread, flat-topped
heap, tailing off and getting gradually nearer the level of the
original ground, on something like the principle of the glacis
in a modern earthwork. At other places, notably on the
eastern slope of Croy, where the slope is strongly in favour
of the south, and where the north bank of the ditch, when
glasgow archaeological society.
if at any one point the depth is ever so much as 20 feet. The
average depth cannot have been more than 12 feet.
Some writers have suggested that the ditch, as originally
made, was filled with water. But the nature of its construction,
and the absence of any effort to keep either the bottom or the
top of the banks at one level for any distance, are fatal to the
supposition, which may be dismissed as pure nonsense.
6. On the Nature of the Outer Mound.
It is clear that the earth duo- out in making: the fosse did
not form the vallum, but was laid out on the outer or northern
side of the fosse. This is demonstrated by the fact that when
a section is examined it is found that the cubic contents of
the ditch, at the place where the section was made, answer
very nearly to the corresponding cubic content of the outer
mound or heap at the same place after the necessary allowance
is made for the expansion of earth firmly packed naturally
before the ditch was made, but loosened and expanded by being
dug out.
The term " outer mound " is perhaps scarcely the most satis-
factory of names. What we have so designated is a formless
irregular heap—irregular, that is, in the sense that it has not
any one type or shape throughout. Yet even in this seeming
irregularity, there is, roughly speaking, a rule. There are, in
the main, two shapes, the flat and the heaped-up, and the
adoption of these respectively appears to a considerable extent
to have been governed by the nature of the levels of the
ground at the various points. Thus, in parts at Bonnymuir,
where the levels of the north bank and of the south bank
of the ditch were not greatly different, the flat shape has
been adopted, and the earth is spread with a surface so broad
as to make it not a mound but a mere outspread, flat-topped
heap, tailing off and getting gradually nearer the level of the
original ground, on something like the principle of the glacis
in a modern earthwork. At other places, notably on the
eastern slope of Croy, where the slope is strongly in favour
of the south, and where the north bank of the ditch, when