Visitors to two Iron Age monuments in Angus (Scotland) at the weekend had the rare opportunity of taking a guided walk of the sites. The tour of the Brown and White Caterthuns, about four miles north-east of Brechin, was organised by Historic Scotland as part of Archaeology Month, which runs throughout September. The hill forts perch on top of two prominent hills between Brechin and Edzell and are protected by systems of earthworks and ditches.
     Until recently they had been considered as two separate sites but a report, commissioned by Historic Scotland and published last year, revealed there are more similarities between them than was thought. Archaeologists uncovered evidence suggesting that they are part of a single unit. The findings were the results of investigations carried out at the 2,000-year-old forts over three years.
     Historic Scotland senior archaeologist Richard Strachan led the tour on Saturday and explained why the study was carried out. He said: "This extensive fieldwork project gave us a much better understanding of these two great enclosure sites on neighbouring hills, and it enabled us to re-evaluate our interpretation of their history. We now know that the forts were occupied for much of the first millennium BCE and probably functioned as ceremonial centres. We concluded, therefore, that the two sites should actually be considered together, arguably even as parts of a single entity. We now have a much greater insight into these wonderful ancient sites and a better appreciation of them, but there are still things that we don't know about them and more to discover about the Caterthuns."

Source: The Press and Journal (14 September 2009)