The remains of a large Roman camp lie beneath the fields north-east of Dunning, in Perthshire. Its south-west corner is now covered by part of the village, and most of the defensive earthworks disappeared during agricultural improvements. About 130 metres of bank still survive in Kincladie Wood, beside the B934. Otherwise, the camp is known largely from marks seen in crops from the air.
Dunning enclosed approximately 47 hectares (117 acres). This was a large military enclosure, but its area does not establish the number of soldiers present or identify a particular legion. It had six entrances: two on the north side, two on the south, and one each on the east and west. The 2014 excavation helped confirm the southern entrance positions. This arrangement also occurs at other Scottish camps, including Raedykes and Normandykes; see Roman marching camps with six gates. Dunning has also been compared in size and layout with the camp at Carey, near Abernethy.
Where was the camp?
The pin shows the approximate location of Dunning Roman Camp, not the surviving line of its defences. For details of the protected archaeological site, see Historic Environment Scotland’s scheduled monument record.
What the excavations found
In the summer of 2014, the University of Glasgow’s Strathearn Environs and Royal Forteviot (SERF) project examined the camp at two places. One excavation crossed the surviving bank and ditch in Kincladie Wood, near a northern entrance. The other was at Pitcairns House on the south-eastern side, where the route of the defences was uncertain. This work followed the discovery of Roman material at the nearby Castle Craig broch, which had brought renewed attention to the Roman presence in the district.
The northern trench exposed a V-shaped ditch 3.1 metres wide and 1.75 metres deep, with a narrow slot cut into its bottom. Beside it was the remains of a turf and earth rampart, separated from the ditch by a strip of open ground. A slot on the inner side probably held timber supporting the rampart. The excavators also noted possible traces of a palisade, although that identification was less secure.
At Pitcairns House, the team found the southern ditch where earlier geophysical survey had failed to locate it. The line of the ditch helped confirm the position of the entrances on this side of the camp. It was another substantial Roman defensive work, in places about two metres deep.
Evidence that the Romans came back
The most important finding was not the size of the defences but their history. The original ditch had been allowed to fill naturally with soil. Later, another ditch had been cut into it. This sequence appeared at both 2014 excavation areas and matched evidence from earlier investigations on other sides of the camp.
It therefore looks as though a sizeable Roman force returned and reused the whole enclosure, rather than occupying a small corner of an abandoned camp. The silt that accumulated in the first ditch suggests the interval between the two phases was appreciably longer than a single campaigning season. Just how much longer remains unknown.
A temporary camp in name only?
Roman marching camps were often occupied briefly, but the defences at Dunning seem unusually carefully made. The probable timber support behind the rampart, the substantial ditch and the evidence for renewed occupation led the excavators to question whether the usual description of the site as a ‘temporary camp’ tells the whole story.
The excavators suggested a more sustained undertaking, perhaps connected with the Gask Ridge military system or operations associated with Carpow. These remain possible contexts. No Roman coins or pottery were recovered from the defences examined in the 2014 investigations to date either occupation. That does not mean the camp has produced no dating evidence: earlier work at the western entrance recovered second-century pottery. Charcoal beneath the rampart offered the prospect of radiocarbon dating, but the 2014 report did not establish a construction date.
Pottery from the western entrance
Excavations in 1992 recovered eleven joining sherds of a mid-second-century black-burnished ware bowl from a lower fill of the titulus ditch outside the western entrance. The national site record also records recutting at the adjacent perimeter-ditch terminals. These are separate observations from the later SERF trenches.
Jones discusses the contrast with Carey, near Abernethy, where a fragment of late-first-century South Gaulish samian was found. The camps are about a day’s march apart and similar in scale. A Flavian foundation followed by Antonine reuse at Dunning is a plausible explanation, but pottery deposited in a ditch does not by itself date its original construction or identify both occupations. See Rebecca Jones, Roman Camps in Scotland, Callander’s Landscape (43:57–44:38).
Dunning has also been mentioned in discussions about Agricola and the Battle of Mons Graupius, partly because of the nearby place-name Duncrub. The report regards that place-name argument as doubtful. The camp shows that a large Roman force operated in Strathearn; it does not tell us where Agricola fought his battle.
The work leaves some important questions open, particularly how the camp related to the local communities of Strathearn. Excavation within the enclosure, rather than only across its defences, might eventually help to answer them. For now, Dunning is a useful warning against assuming that every Roman ‘temporary camp’ had a short or simple history.
The excavation report
Ewan Campbell, Joss Durnan and Stephen Driscoll, Excavations at Dunning Roman Camp: Data Structure Report (University of Glasgow, 2014). The full 43-page report is available as a PDF, with site plans, sections and excavation photographs. Figure 2 shows the camp’s outline as reconstructed from aerial photographs.
Related reading: Inside a Roman Marching Camp and Roman Camps in Scotland.
Further publication: Campbell, E., Driscoll, S. and Durnan, J. (2026), ‘Excavations at Dunning Roman Temporary Camp in 2014’, listed as accepted for publication in the Tayside and Fife Archaeological Journal. Its text was restricted in the repository when checked on 13 October 2026; the excavation account above is based on the accessible 2014 report.
