A considerable amount of developer-funded excavation has been undertaken in the SESARF area over the last 30 or so years, with interventions mostly being related to housing and industrial/commercial developments, infrastructural work and the erection of wind turbines.
Examples of Neolithic sites that have been discovered in this way include the Early Neolithic settlements at Ratho Quarry (Smith 1995); Newbridge M8 Industrial Estate (Carter et al 2010, 33; Sheridan 2007); Edinburgh Park (Moloney and Lawson 2006); the Catstane (Cowie 1978); west of Gogar Mains (Will and James 2017) and West Edge, Long Loan, Gilmerton (Westgarth 2020). All of these are within the City of Edinburgh.
The extensive excavations undertaken by GUARD between 2001 and 2004 on the Haddington to Dunbar stretch of the A1 in East Lothian has had the biggest impact on our understanding of Neolithic activity in the region (Lelong and MacGregor 2007). These excavations revealed evidence for Early Neolithic activity in the form of a long, non-megalithic barrow at Eweford West and a long, non-megalithic funerary monument on Pencraig Hill. Middle Neolithic activity was present in the form of settlements at Knowes, Overhailes and Pencraig Wood. There was also Late Neolithic activity at Eweford East and Eweford West, including the erection of a row of timber posts at Eweford East, while Late Neolithic finds included Grooved Ware and chisel arrowheads of flint.
Earlier, non-developer-funded fieldwork in advance of other A1 upgrade work in the mid-1980s exposed part of the cursus at Monktonhall Junction, Inveresk, 150 m north of Whitecraig (Hanson 2002; Breeze et al 2015). Hanson’s excavations also uncovered a pit, immediately to the west of the cursus, that was found to contain sherds of four Late Neolithic Grooved Ware pots (Jorge in Hanson forthcoming).