http://www.themodernantiquarian.com/post/32005

Found by my dog at Barnscar who ran up to me with this in her mouth!

Dunno what it is, but it looks like a bit of the one I found the other week:

http://www.megalithomania.com/holes.jpg

Most unusual, but almost certainly modern

Both your stone and FW's look like natural cupmarks to me, though it's always difficult to tell from a piccy. Natural CM's tend to be smoother in the actual cupmark than man made ones and the edges of the CM are usually sharper and more defined with the cups being a lot deeper and often all the way through the stone.
Saying that though, natural cupmarks, I believe, would have caught the imagination of megalith builders and this has filtered down through folklore in terms of 'hag stones'- stones with natural holes through them that are beleived to ward off evil spirits. I like em!
I found a site last year which has both natural and what looks like man-made CM's on the same stone;
http://www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/6457
I re-visited last week with the digi cam and will post some better pics soon.

Hi,
In relation to Castercliff, I actually completed a degree in Archaeology at Nottingham University back in 1995 and my honours dissertation was on Castercliff (I grew up near the site). The dissertation runs to about 18,000 words and includes all the written source data I could find (there was an excavation back in the early 70's by David Coombes of Manchester University and this was published in the Transactions of the Lancashire & Cheshire Archaeological Society) plus my own analysis of the Bronze Age and Iron Age sites in the area and Castercliff's place within this. There is a hard copy of the dissertation in the local studies section of Nelson Library (I gave it to them back in 1995 and I believe it's still there - someone quoted from it online so at least one person has looked at it!) - I've moved around a great deal and now live in London and I have misplaced my copy. Should you be in the library you may want to have a look at it - it's called 'Castercliff in Context' (I apologise in advance for any poor writing and blame the fact that I wrote it up very quickly in all-night sessions fuelled by coffee and spliffs, but I think on the whole it was reasonably good).
In respect of your identification of 'hut circles' on the site, these are all later coal mining workings (known as bell pits) - none are hut circles sadly. The excavations of the early 70's found no evidence for occupation, but futher work needs to be done. I suspect that your worked stone relates to activity on the site sometime in the last few hundred years, but I do hope I'm wrong and it is more ancient.
The ramparts are the key feature at the site and the evidence suggests the inner rampart was a timber-box construction with stone facing - I did do a couple of reconstruction drawings in my dissertation. There is also a plan of the site and some trench cross-sections which I took from the David Coombes excavations of the early 70's. These excavations produced no finds, but again further excavation at the site really needs to be done.

OK, hopefully this helps - if you have any other questions let me know through here or preferably email me - [email protected]
All the best and enjoy the site!

Regards,
Steve