Droughdool Mote (also spelled Droughduil) () is a

Neolithic The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several parts ...

round mound in the parish of Old Luce,

Wigtownshire Wigtownshire or the County of Wigtown (, ) is one of the historic counties of Scotland, covering an area in the south-west of the country. Until 1975, Wigtownshire was an administrative county used for local government. Since 1975 the area has f ...

Dumfries and Galloway Dumfries and Galloway ( sco, Dumfries an Gallowa; gd, Dùn Phrìs is Gall-Ghaidhealaibh) is one of 32 unitary council areas of Scotland and is located in the western Southern Uplands. It covers the counties of Scotland, historic counties of ...

. The mound is oval in plan, measuring 60m by 50m at its base and rises to 10m in height. It is located 400m south of the late neolithic

palisaded enclosure A palisade, sometimes called a stakewall or a paling, is typically a fence or defensive wall made from iron or wooden stakes, or tree trunks, and used as a defensive structure or enclosure. Palisades can form a stockade. Etymology ''Palisade'' ...

Dunragit Dunragit ( gd, Dùn Reicheit) is a village on the A75 road, A75, between Stranraer and Glenluce in Dumfries and Galloway, south-west Scotland. Dunragit is within the parish of Old Luce, in the traditional county of Wigtownshire. The modern villag ...

. It has been suggested that the mound may have been used as a viewing platform for activities at Dunragit complex of monuments. The most well known parallel the site has is Silbury Hill in Wiltshire, but is closer in size to the less well known sites at Conquer Barrow, Willy Howe and Wold Newton. The mound was originally built with stepped sides on top of a sand dune. Excavation between 1999-2002 revealed a round cairn at the top of the mound, similar to the nearby Mid Gleniron A. The mound was assumed to be a medieval mote for a castle, but is different in structure and location to the motes in the surrounding area. In 2002, excavation and

optically stimulated luminescence dating Luminescence dating refers to a group of methods of determining how long ago mineral grains were last exposed to sunlight or sufficient heating. It is useful to geologists and archaeologists who want to know when such an event occurred. It uses var ...

showed that the site was prehistoric, and probably placed within a date bracket associated with the Dunragit complex of monuments to the north. The site is still classified as a "motte (medieval)" on Canmore, the online database of ancient and historical monuments in Scotland. The complex of Neolithic monuments at Dunragit was identified in 1992 by Marilyn Brown of the

Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS) was an executive non-departmental public body of the Scottish Government that was "sponsored" inanced and with oversightthrough Historic Scotland, an executive ...

from aerial photographs. When these cropmarks were examined within the wider landscape, it was found that the Droughdool Mote was aligned on the entrance to the middle of three concentric rings at the Dunragit site. While this alignment may be coincidental, other Neolithic flat topped mounds, such as Silbury Hill, Hatfield Barrow and Knowlton in Dorset, are also associated with nearby large enclosures. A feature of these other sites, missing from Droughdool, is a ditch surrounding the mounds which was often filled with water. However, during the Neolithic, the sea level was considerably higher than it is today and at high tide, an area between the mound and the Dunragit enclosure (the Whitecrook Basin) would have been inundated by sea. Thomas proposes that this may have obviated the need for a ditch at this site. Sites linked by water are well known from the Neolithic. The most famous of these is the connection between Durrington Walls and

Stonehenge Stonehenge is a prehistoric monument on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, England, west of Amesbury. It consists of an outer ring of vertical sarsen standing stones, each around high, wide, and weighing around 25 tons, topped by connectin ...

linked by the River Avon. Thomas speculates that:

"In the case of Dunragit and Droughduil, passing out of the enclosure along the entrance passage, and walking down into the Whitecrook Basin and then through the water before climbing the mound might have been understood as a journey of transition or transformation."

The site is a scheduled monument. It was excavated between 1999 and 2002 by Julian Thomas.

References

{{reflist Archaeological sites in Dumfries and Galloway Scheduled Ancient Monuments in Dumfries and Galloway