Interviews with Jelka Plate: B: Andrew, archeology enthusiast

What do you see when you walk around the Battlehill to make your finds?

With worked flints it’s the straight lines, as these are quite unusual in nature, that‘s what draws my eyes to them. Most people looking for flints spot unsual colour or the transparancy. I see the unnatural lines. This piece of flint was created by a person who had been trying to make a tool, on striking the flint it has fractured and created an unnatural straight line.
There have definitely people been living on the Battle Hill. It is not a case of someone just passing through, quickly making a tool and leaving the waste flint. Such a large concentration of flints in a small area suggests that one part of the hill was habited over a considerable period of time, perhaps over hundreds, or even thousands of years. The people would have been living in huts and the burnt flints may suggest a hearth area with knapping taking place nearby.

The waste flakes of flint are very difficult to date, they could be anything from 8.000 to 4.000 years old. But this one here dates from the neolithic period, around 4.000 years ago.

To an uneducated eye the flints are just normal small stones, but I know that they don´t come from this area, so they have to be brought in by humans. The nearest deposits come from the coast, at Boddam, near Peterhead, around 40 miles away.
This one is the top of a knife which has broken off. The person that used it was probably very annoyed when it snapped. When you think of that piece of flint, that goes back – let´s say a generation is 20 years – 200 generations, maybe his genes exist in the people living here today. Could you imagine seeing his or her face passing through all the generations to the modern age, it would be amazing. It would have been a very different world back then. Remember we had bears here, and also lynx, wolves, and aurochs.

Back around 8.000 years ago in the Mesolithic period it would have been a wilderness with dense forestation. Some of the flints I’ve found may have been from that hunter-gatherer period. People then probably lived on the coast in the winter where there was plenty of food. They would have come inland in the summer to hunt and go back to the coast in winter.

Around 4000 years ago early farmers settled and they started clearing the forests for grazing land.

What was your most exciting find you made in the Battlehill?

The ring was quite exciting, initially I thought that it may have been ancient and made of gold, which would have been nice. Do you see the little sparkles showing through? It is only the cheapest of tin and nickel dating to about 120 years ago.

Would Huntly already have looked like it looks now?

Oh yes, the houses would have been there. Not that much different.

See, this one is quite an interesting thing as well. When I found this, there was only a tiny little bit sticking out of the dirt. When I showed it to the head of our archaeology group he was convinced that it was a quartz ball and that it was about 4.000 years old. Under a microscope it looks fantastic, it looks handmade. We sent it down to Edinburgh and they were intrigued by it as well. Eventually they suggested that it was just a badly battered boys marble from 50 years ago! They couldn’t really understand how it had landed up like that, whether a boy had repeatedly been hitting it with a stone or set it on fire to make it look so crackly and ancient. Anyway it is still a nice object, I like it.

Which sounds do you associate with the woods?

I have been up there when it’s been a really wild day, real big storms when it is quite frightening to be there. You think „Wow, will I be crushed by a tree here.“ The elemental forces of nature can be exciting and exhilarating, the wind howling, trees creaking, banging and crashing noises with branches and pine cones falling all around.
There are not too many birds around. Those Norwegian spruces are quite sterile trees I always think. It really is the sound of the wind, even on a calm day it´s often windy on the Huntly side of the Hill.

Which smells do you associate with the woods?

After heavy rain there is a nice smell in the woods, a nice fresh and earthy smell. And also sometimes you can smell the pine.
I have seen me going up to the Battle Hill for a walk and my thoughts have been muddled at the time and I’m stressed with my workload, but after walking around the hill any stress diminishes and you obtain a real clarity of mind.
I have often lost the dog up there. Because I am walking through the woods and I am kind of relaxed and lost in my own thoughts I forget to keep checking on the dog. The dog is deaf and it´s eyesight is not good, so it takes a wrong turning and ends up going through the middle of the woods, but it always goes back to the car and looks up at the car boot and waits for me.

What relation do you have with the animals in the woods?

Rabbits and moles are good friends as they kick up the earth. This piece of flint was buried under a tree. A rabbit kicked out so much earth from its burrow so that it was just lying there. You would not have found it otherwise. Moles are friendly as well to archaeologists or people who want to find things.
Once I met a fox. One wild day I was in the middle of the woods where very few people go. I was with my dog, but it was way behind me. Because it was windy this fox did not hear me approaching. We met and just for a split second which seemed like a long two or three seconds, we just looked each other in the eyes. It was strange to be that close to a wild animal, and rare experience to look it right in the eyes. It had a big rabbit in its mouth, like a buck rabbit. He had obviously just killed him and was walking back. He had that level of surprise, but he did not show any great fear and then he just turned and carried on its way. That was a nice experience with nature.