RHYNIE, SCOTLAND—BBC News reports that many more people may have lived at the site of an ancient hillfort on eastern Scotland’s Tap O’Noth than previously thought. Gordon Noble of the University of Aberdeen said that the original settlement on the hill has been radiocarbon dated to the third century A.D., and is likely to have been Pictish. Drone surveys and laser technology have identified as many as 800 possible huts clustered in groups and set along trackways throughout the site. Noble said that if each of the huts housed four or five people, then as many as 4,000 people could have lived on the hill. A rampart was built at the top of the hill sometime between the fifth and sixth centuries to enclose the 17-acre settlement, he added. Aberdeenshire Council archaeologist Bruce Mann suggested that people may have gathered for protection against Roman incursions. Scholars had previously suggested that settlements of this size did not appear in Scotland until the twelfth century. For more on the Picts in Scotland, go to "Warrior Stone."
