In 1999, when Rosamund Cleal and Ann MacSween (1999) published their Grooved Ware in Britain and Ireland volume, just four findspots of Late Neolithic Grooved Ware in Highland Region were listed in their Gazetteer: Freswick Links, Caithness (MHG1669; Case Study Freswick Links), Raigmore (Stoneyfield), Inverness (MHG3723; Case Study Raigmore (Stoneyfield) Cairn), Inverness Police HQ (MHG55798) and outside a Beaker cist at Dornoch Nursery, Sutherland (MHG11738). In 2021, thanks to recent developer-funded excavations, the number of findspots has risen to 11, although this figure ignores the fact that some pairs of findspots are separated by just 200m or less; this these findspots could well have been part of the same original settlement as each other. These additional findspots are:
- Fortrose and Rosemarkie Waste Water Works (MHG60873; MHG60874; Sheridan 2014a; Case Study Fortrose and Rosemarkie Waste Water Works);
- Culduthel, phases 7–8 (MHG51630; Sheridan 2010b and in Hatherley forthcoming)
- SE Inverness Flood Relief Channel, Phase 3 (MHG55500; Sheridan 2011), which is 200m south of Culduthel
- Lower Slackbuie excavated in 2017 by Headland Archaeology (EHG5387/MHG3735; Dalland 2020)
- Lower Slackbuie (ASDA site: EHG3271; Johnson 2012; Case Study Lower Slackbuie) which is c 150m away from the 2017 Lower Slackbuie excavations
- Inverness West Link Road which is probably the Canal Park site, Torvean (Peteranna 2016);
- East Beechwood Farm (MHG54233; Engl and Clements 2009), which is 200 m from the original location of the Raigmore site
Note that one sherd from Canna, tentatively described as Grooved Ware (Gannon 2016, 144, fig. 8.4), is too small and undiagnostic to be accepted as an example of this pottery type.
With the exception of the finds from Freswick Links, Dornoch Nursery and Fortrose and Rosemarkie Waste Water works, all the findspots are in, or within a couple of kilometres of, the city of Inverness. In several cases, the findspots are part of multi-phase palimpsests of activity dating from different times during the Neolithic, and, in some cases, subsequent periods as well, showing a persistence of use of these areas. The size of the assemblages varies widely. The find from Dornoch Nursery consisting solely of a single rimsherd, and those from Inverness Police HQ and from Fortrose and Rosemarkie Waste Water Works consisting of small numbers of sherds from single vessels, while the assemblage from Raigmore comprises sherds from at least 35 pots and that from the Lower Slackbuie (ASDA) site comprises sherds from 317 pots. Several of the assemblages have not yet been published, and in some cases post-excavation specialist work has not yet been undertaken, so the discussion of pot design below is necessarily provisional.
The find contexts appear to be domestic in nature, although at Raigmore five of the pits that contained Grooved Ware also contained cremated human remains (Simpson 1996a). Of these, the remains in one turned out to be intrusive and from a Late Bronze Age episode (Copper et al 2018, 224). The remains in one pit (Pit 20), however, produced a radiocarbon date, of 3090–2907 cal BC (SUERC-77846, Copper et al 2018, 223), confirming that in this pit, at least, there had been a funerary deposition – or else a deployment of human remains associated with Grooved Ware. A further example of an association between Grooved Ware and calcined bone in a pit is known from Culduthel (Sheridan 2010b; Hatherley forthcoming). A fragment of that bone from that context has been dated to 2900–2680 cal BC (SUERC-20308). Even though it was not possible to determine whether the bone was human or animal, the fact that the pit was part of a circle of pits containing charcoal and burnt stone, with further pits inside that circle containing calcined bone, points towards this being a funerary deposition of human remains and not a set of pits for disposing of domestic waste (Hatherley forthcoming).
The Grooved Ware pottery from the Highland Region is variable in its design, but it is all flat-based, and the vessel forms are mostly tub-, bucket- or barrel-shaped. See Copper et al (2021) for a discussion of some of this pottery, and Copper (2019) for an online gazetteer from his Tracing the Lines project, which studied Scottish Grooved Ware south of Orkney. Many of the pots are large, over 200 mm in rim diameter, with the example from Inverness Police HQ having an estimated rim diameter between 250mm and 300mm (Kenworthy 1997) and one from the Lower Slackbuie ASDA site having a 340mm rim diameter (Johnson 2012, 7). It is possible that some of the small, relatively thin-walled vessels from the Lower Slackbuie ASDA site are from shallow fineware bowls with splaying walls, although not enough of each vessel is present to be sure about this. Wall thickness and fineness of fabric varies, with many of the large pots having wall thicknesses in excess of 12 mm, and/or having large lithic inclusions. Some pots, such as those from Inverness Police HQ and Pots 40 and 41 from Culduthel, are undecorated or only minimally decorated, while others have decoration that is incised, impressed, applied, or combinations of all three.
Examples of thin-walled and comparatively fine Grooved Ware from Lower Slackbuie (ASDA site), Inverness, that may include shallow fineware bowls. After Johnson 2012; ©NG Archaeological Services
Several assemblages include design features, including alternate slashes located between parallel horizontal lines creating a wavy line design, that are shared with (and originated in) Orcadian Grooved Ware. This is one more piece of evidence for connections between the Highland Region and Orkney during the Neolithic period, in this case, at the very beginning of the 3rd millennium BC.
This design is present in the Lower Slackbuie ASDA assemblage, and at Canal Park, Torvean. Other Orcadian features found on Highland assemblages include the use of a variety of features:
- scalloped or notched rims (Lower Slackbuie ASDA and Raigmore);
- applied horizontal cordons (e.g. Lower Slackbuie ASDA);
- ‘slashed’ or indented cordons or pseudo-cordons (Lower Slackbuie ASDA and Culduthel, Pot 41);
- ‘blind’ circular hollows resembling incomplete perforations (Lower Slackbuie ASDA and Raigmore);
- applied pellets (Freswick Sands on the far north coast)
- an applied oval motif (Lower Slackbuie ASDA site);
- other applied and incised designs featuring horizontal and diagonal lines, creating triangular blank areas (Lower Slackbuie ASDA and Raigmore)
- decoration around the upper part of the body, featuring straight or wavy incised lines (grooves), Inverness Flood Relief assemblage, Pot 5.
Other design features are harder to parallel in Orkney or have fewer close comparanda there, such as the decorative schemes in the pots from Pit 20 at Raigmore which may, despite an early associated date, be slightly later than the rest of the assemblage (Case Study Raigmore (Stoneyfield) Cairn). Pot 4, with vertical ribs, is of a style of Grooved Ware that has a widespread distribution in England and Wales and Scotland as far north as Inverness; Ian Longworth dubbed it ‘Durrington Walls style’. While the use of vertical cordons is attested in Orcadian Grooved Ware (eg at Skara Brae), no classic ‘Durrington Walls’ style pots are known from there, and its presence at Raigmore points towards a network of contacts extending southwards from this site. Dates from England, including the eponymous site, suggest it was in use there around 2600–2500 BC, whereas Copper’s Tracing the Lines project has shown that it was in use in Scotland as early as 2834–2475 cal BC. For a pair of identical dates from Wellbrae, South Lanarkshire see Copper et al (2018, 223). It may be that the radiocarbon date from calcined human bone associated with the Grooved Ware pots in Raigmore Pit 20 dated to 3090–2907 cal BC (SUERC-77846), suffers from carbon exchange with old wood used as pyre fuel, and is thus slightly older than its actual date. The dating of the Raigmore assemblage, and of other Grooved Ware, is discussed by Mike Copper elsewhere (2019; Copper et al 2021).
The dating of the Highland Region Grooved Ware, confirms that this type of pottery was definitely in use from around the beginning of the third millennium. In addition to the dates mentioned above, there are two dates for short-lived species charcoal from pits associated with early-style Grooved Ware at the Inverness Flood Relief site at Culduthel: 3030–2890 cal BC (SUERC-34575) for Pit 23 and 3090–2900 cal BC (SUERC-34576) for Pit 20 (Sheridan 2011, 39). As regards the Grooved Ware from the Lower Slackbuie ASDA site, two vessels from the palaeochannel there are from a context dated to 2617–2351 cal BC and 2565–2299 cal BC. Much later dates of 2296–2041 cal BC and 1881–1689 cal BC came from a pit containing what are believed to be sherds of Grooved Ware. These are too late for this ceramic style and it may well be that the burnt hazelnut shells that produced these dates were intrusive (Case Study Lower Slackbuie).
As for the length of its currency, archaeologists should not be tempted to interpret an old date of 2565–2201 cal BC (SRR-429]) for a possibly mixed-species charcoal sample from Pit 21 at Raigmore as indicating that Grooved Ware use persisted there as late as that; the dated charcoal could well be intrusive, and could relate to the construction of the Chalcolithic Clava Cairn at that site. The question of the overall currency of Grooved Ware in Highland Region remains open, and many more dates are required – particularly for pottery found during recent developer-funded excavations.