Castle Roy: Investigating Medieval Cultural Landscapes, Buildings and Materials in Badenoch, Abernethy and Mar

Abstract

ABSTRACT A multidisciplinary historic landscape, buildings and materials study is presented, which situates the construction of Castle Roy within the wider physical and cultural environment of medieval Grampian Scotland. The paper highlights that the castle has been constructed close to an ecotone between distinctive upland and mountain biomes, before considering previous evidence relating to the building and its administrative role in the medieval period. A study of the surviving structure and its component materials is then presented, which includes petrographic, archaeobotanical and radiocarbon analysis of a well-distributed assemblage of mortar fragments, in comparison with various potential source materials from the surrounding environment. Informed by these analyses, Bayesian techniques are employed to generate estimates for the constructional chronology of the upstanding building, before reconsidering the history of the lordship and the location of the castle relative to other buildings across the region. Presenting the first independent dating evidence relating to the construction of this culturally significant building, the study ultimately confirms that Castle Roy was probably constructed in the late 12th to early 13th century at the administrative centre of the surrounding lordship and parish.