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Turf was widely used as a building material in the Roman period, especially in military architecture. Despite this, few studies have investigated properties of turf in construction, and fewer still have applied micromorphology to ancient turf walls. This study details the methods and results from a combined macro-and micro-scale analysis, using samples from the well-preserved ramparts at Vindolanda, a fort associated with Hadrian's Wall. Our work not only proposes a refined methodology for the wider geoarchaeological study of turf walls, but also provides new, deeper insight into the properties of turf as a building material.

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Edinburgh EH8 9AGIron Age studies in Britain operate in a world populated by roundhouses. Post-ring evidence is generally interpreted in domestic contexts. However, research on later prehistoric roundhouses in northeast Scotland has identified a small but significant number of round structures in unusual locations, with unusual architectural details and a distinct lack of domestic material. Some of these relate to Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age stone circles, for which Richard Bradley's work in the wider region has highlighted progressive biographies of construction and reuse. This paper, rooted in architectural design theory, selects a particular case study, the multiple timber post-rings at Candle Stane, Aberdeenshire, to highlight the complexities in interpreting these interesting yet enigmatic buildings. The architectural approach develops alternative reconstructions that lead to new perspectives on later prehistoric architecture as event-based and concerned with process.These processes only gradually lead to an architectural end product, which displays distinctly non-domestic connotations. The research not only highlights the usefulness of data derived from rescue work for academic study, but the advocated approach of reconstructing in alternatives also lends itself for developing innovative approaches in Higher Education to teach visual competence.Structures clearly dedicated to ritual functions can be identified from the Neolithic onwards, but in Britain this evidence seems to decline from the Middle Bronze Age, coinciding with a 1 highlighting the uncertainties regarding the roofing of the Early Neolithic structure at Claish. 12 Noble et al. 2007, 153-5. 3 conclusions into question and proposes a series of alternative interpretations to stimulate debate over ambiguous evidence. ROUND HOUSES, ROUND-HOUSES, ROUNDHOUSES: CASE STUDIES FROM NORTHEAST SCOTLAND The fertile lowland areas of Scotland's south and east have attracted settlement for thousands of years. People have worked these lands, built and rebuilt homes and consequently compromised the archaeological evidence of earlier periods. Because of this development pressure in these areas, their archaeological record has become dominated by rescue work, which by its nature is limited in scale to the affected area. As Bradley, Gosden and their colleagues demonstrated, such records still present important data for prehistoric archaeological research. 13 For the author's study, focused on northeast Scotland, the rescue excavation record was not only useful for large-scale analysis, but also to address specific research questions in detail, highlighting a small number of sites that stood out from the general roundhouse evidence. This prompted the present enquiry into whether round timber structures of later prehistoric date would have necessarily been used as prehistoric round houses. What may appear as playing with semantics is in fact an important distinction to be clarified to ensure the use of terms consistent with the argument: the spelling "roundhou...