Two dog walkers in Angus, Scotland, made a discovery that stopped them in their tracks last week. Strong winds peeled back layers of sand on a quiet beach and revealed human and animal footprints locked in clay for over two thousand years.
The prints lasted less than 48 hours before the North Sea swallowed them forever.
A Chance Find That Rewrote Local History
Ivor Campbell and Jenny Snedden were walking their dogs Ziggy and Juno along the dunes near Montrose when 55 mph gusts exposed a patch of hard clay dotted with strange marks.
“At first we thought they were just dog prints from last summer,” Campbell told local reporters. “Then we saw the size and shape. Some were clearly human, barefoot, and right next to what looked like deer tracks.”
The couple immediately contacted archaeologists. Within hours, a team from the University of Aberdeen arrived with whatever they could grab, including Plaster of Paris from a nearby craft shop.
This is the first time Iron Age human and animal footprints have ever been recorded in Scotland.
Working Against the Tide and the Wind
Dr Kate Britton led the emergency excavation in conditions she described as the worst of her career.
“The sea was coming in fast, every tide ripping away another section,” she said. “At the same time we were being sand-blasted. We had to clean, photograph, laser-scan and cast everything while literally kneeling in freezing water.”
The team worked through the night. By dawn the next day, waves had erased half the site. By the following afternoon, everything was gone.
But they saved enough.
Researchers took detailed 3D scans and made plaster casts of the clearest prints. Radiocarbon dating of organic material in the clay confirms the tracks date between 100 BC and AD 100, right in the heart of Scotland’s late Iron Age.
Who Walked Here Two Millennia Ago?
The prints tell a quiet but powerful story.
Adult human footprints, some with children, move in different directions. Deer tracks overlap them. A few prints suggest people were carrying heavy loads.
“It’s like walking into someone’s afternoon from two thousand years ago,” said Professor Gordon Noble, who co-directed the project.
These people lived during the Roman push into Scotland. The footprints date to the exact centuries when local tribes were deciding whether to fight, trade or hide from the legions marching north.
The Picts, the painted warriors who would later puzzle the Romans, were just beginning to emerge in this same area.
Why This Matters More Than Most Ancient Finds
Most Iron Age sites in Scotland are hill forts, stone rounds or buried metalwork. Organic traces almost never survive.
Footprints are different.
They are direct, intimate contact with people who left no names. A child’s print next to an adult’s. A deer walking the same path hours later. Someone stopping to adjust a heavy basket.
Only five similar footprint sites are known across the entire United Kingdom, and most have already been lost to the sea.
William Mills, the project collaborator, put it simply: “These prints were made in minutes and destroyed in hours. We caught a moment that almost vanished.”
The Montrose Basin May Hide More Secrets
The discovery has changed how archaeologists look at the whole area.
Old clay layers underlie large parts of the Montrose Basin. Similar storm events could expose more prints at any time.
Local councils are now talking about new monitoring programs. Dog walkers and beach goers are being asked to report unusual marks in clay after big storms.
Dr Britton is blunt about the urgency.
“Climate change means stronger storms and higher tides,” she said. “These sites are appearing more often, but they’re also disappearing faster than ever. We have a closing window to find and record them.”
For now, the plaster casts and digital models from Angus are all that remain of that brief morning when the Iron Age stepped back onto a Scottish beach.
Two thousand years separated those ancient walkers from Ivor, Jenny, Ziggy and Juno.
Last week, for one windy afternoon, the gap disappeared.
What do you think when you imagine standing where those people stood? Drop your thoughts below, and if you’re sharing on social media use #IronAgeFootprints so we can all follow the conversation.
