In South East Scotland, as elsewhere in Britain and Ireland, the appearance of farming as a way of life marked a significant change from the hunting, fishing and foraging way of life that had been practised for millennia – early evidence of which includes the relatively substantial Early Mesolithic house at East Barns near Dunbar (SESARF Palaeolithic and Mesolithic).
In this part of Scotland the radiocarbon dating evidence suggests that the first farmers probably appeared around the 38th century BC (Whittle et al 2011). Thanks to ancient DNA (aDNA) analysis of human remains from elsewhere in Scotland, and more broadly in Britain and Ireland (eg Brace et al 2018; Brace and Booth 2023; Cassidy 2023), prevailing opinion is that farming was introduced by immigrant groups of farmers from the Continent, rather than being proactively adopted by seagoing Mesolithic groups, as has also been argued (see Sheridan and Whittle 2023 and Brace and Booth 2023 for a discussion). In South East Scotland, these farmers will likely have come from the Nord-Pas de Calais region of northern France. There is debate as to whether they came directly from France, or landed in south-east England then moved northwards, but a diaspora-like arrival directly from northern France is a clear possibility (Sheridan and Whittle 2023). This strand of Neolithisation is called the ‘Carinated Bowl Neolithic’, named after the distinctive type of pottery that they used. In a Continental context, this pottery represents one of several regional groupings of pottery that emerged when farmers spread out from the Paris Basin during the late 5th millennium BC, due to overcrowding there (Beau et al 2017). It shares features of both Chassey and early Michelsberg-type pottery; on the Continent, Carinated Bowl pottery could thus be described as Chasséo-Michelsberg in type (Sheridan 2007; 2016).
The way of life that these immigrant farming groups brought from their north French homeland was one based on agro-pastoral farming, supplemented by hunting (but not fishing) and some gathering of wild resources. They will have brought with them the ‘nuts and bolts’ of farming – domesticated cows, sheep and goats and pigs, along with cereals such as wheat, barley and oats, and flax. These will have been transported, as immature animals and as seedcorn, across the sea, almost certainly in hide-covered boats. Their farming know-how will have been based on over a millennium’s experience of farming on the Continent, and these farmers will have known how to seek out the best agricultural land and how to exploit it.
These farming groups also brought with them a whole new technology – pottery making – as well as other novelties: leaf-shaped arrowheads, ground and polished stone axeheads, a particular way of knapping stone, and an architectural tradition based on the construction of essentially rectangular timber houses, for permanent, year-round habitation. They will also have used slighter temporary structures for seasonally-specific activities. One such structure, which seems to be of wattle-and-daub construction, may be represented at The Hirsel, Scottish Borders (Cramp 2014, 37-40).
It appears that, when a group of farmers arrived in a new area, they would construct a massive communal house or ‘hall’. These huge structures would house several extended families until people felt sufficiently well established to ‘bud off’ into individual farmsteads, at which point the ‘hall’ was burnt down. Two such structures are known within the SESARF area, at Doon Hill, East Lothian (see SESARF 4.2 Settlement) and Sprouston, Scottish Borders. The latter is known only from aerial photographs and requires ground-truthing through excavation (Smith 1991) and although normally described as a Neolithic timber hall, it has also been suggested to be a Neolithic mortuary enclosure (Millican 2016, 146).
These farmers also brought their Continental beliefs, traditions and ritual practices, all of which differed significantly from those of the indigenous inhabitants. Moreover, some brought with them their precious and sacred axeheads made from jadeitite and other Alpine rock from the North Italian Alps (Sheridan and Pailler 2012; Sheridan et al 2020; Sheridan in press). These very special possessions – some of which may have been several generations old when they were brought over – were not used for felling trees or working wood, although they were perfectly capable of being so used. Instead their use was bound up with the belief system. Their owners may well have ascribed magical, protective powers to them. Several of these have been found in south east Scotland, including two found on Cunzierton Farm, Oxnam, Scottish Borders. The pattern of deposition of Alpine axeheads matches that on the Continent (Pétrequin and Pétrequin 2025; Sheridan in press): it appears that these precious heirlooms were deliberately deposited at significant places in the landscape, thereby returning them to the world of the gods and ancestors, rather than being casually discarded in settlements.
These farming groups made a major impact on the landscape, not only through clearing areas of forest to establish farmland and by building their huge communal houses, but also by constructing sizeable non-megalithic funerary monuments for their dead, such as the long barrow at Eweford West, East Lothian (Lelong and MacGregor 2007). Only a very few people were buried in these monuments; perhaps these people were selected to be monumentalised as the ‘founding fathers and mothers’ of their communities. The monuments would have required the communal labour of several groups in an area, and they constituted a permanent and prominent mark on the landscape. They were therefore making a statement about community identity and the association with an area; the descendants of their builders could claim ‘this is our land, because our ancestors are buried here’.
The aDNA evidence available to us as summarised by Brace and Booth (2023) also indicates that these incoming farmers had a major impact on the genetic makeup of the population in Britain and Ireland (see Cassidy 2023). The genetic signature of the Mesolithic inhabitants of these islands virtually disappears, and does not reappear at a later date as had occurred on the Continent. In genetic terms, this constitutes a near-total population replacement. This does not mean, however, that the Mesolithic population of Britain was wiped out, either by hostile farmers or by inadvertently-introduced illnesses to which it had no immunity. As Brace and Booth point out (2023, 132-3), there is evidence, from the west of Scotland, that some Mesolithic groups coexisted with farmers for several generations. In the area in and around Oban, eight people who are buried in caves and in a rock shelter have genetic signatures indicating admixture between the indigenous and immigrant population. The reason for such a dramatic change in the genetic makeup of the population overall is likely to be that the Mesolithic population was small and sparsely distributed, whereas the incoming farmers were arriving in considerable numbers, and were having large families, thereby ‘drowning out’ the Mesolithic genetic signature.
In south-east Scotland, there is no clear evidence to show how long the Mesolithic way of life continued, nor do we have any Mesolithic or Neolithic human remains to analyse for aDNA. It is assumed that the local population of hunter-fisher-foragers acculturated, sooner or later, into the Neolithic lifestyle.
Clearly the early farmers flourished in parts of south-east Scotland, quickly establishing networks linking them with farming groups within and beyond this part of Scotland. It was over such networks that items such as axeheads of tuff made at Great Langdale in the north-west England, and items of pitchstone from the Isle of Arran (Ballin, 2009). A leaf arrowhead of Antrim porcellanite has been found at Haremoss, near Selkirk for instance (Clarke 1969).
Over time, ceramic and architectural traditions changed, as did patterns of interaction with areas outside south-east Scotland. Strong connections with northern England are evident at various times through the fourth millennium and into the third. The enormous so-called ‘monster bead’ of cannel coal or shale found in Pencaitland parish, East Lothian (Anon. 1879, 126-7) is a type of jewellery that is widely distributed in Britain, and probably dates to the centuries around 3500 BC (Sheridan 2007). Some examples of ‘monster beads’ elsewhere – including a necklace found at Greenbrae, Aberdeenshire (Kenworth, 1976) are known to have been made from jet from around Whitby in North Yorkshire. These would have been symbols of power and indicate that some degree of social differentiation was in operation.
Later evidence for connections with northern England includes three Middle Neolithic belt sliders, made of jet and cannel coal or shale (SESARF 4.5, Sheridan 2012a) and a range of artefacts made from high-quality flint imported from Yorkshire (Ballin 2011). Again, these exotica suggest social differentiation and the signalling of status. The Impressed Ware pottery in use during the later fourth millennium and the beginning of the third (for example at Meldon Bridge, Scottish Borders) also shows strong links with that in use south of the modern border with England.
There is evidence – albeit sparse – for major communal projects at various points during the fourth and early third millennia:
- cursus monuments (which may, by analogy with dated examples elsewhere in Scotland, belong to the second quarter of the fourth millennium);
- single-entrance ‘henge’ monuments, of which the most convincing candidate is Overhowden, Scottish Borders this could date to around 3000 BC;
- a major timber enclosure at Meldon Bridge, Scottish Borders most likely built between the 29th and 26th century BC.
During the Late Neolithic, in the early centuries of the third millennium, the inhabitants of south-east Scotland will have been aware of developments in Orkney. Consequently they adopted Grooved Ware as a novel ceramic tradition with the fine, thin-walled shallow bowls found at Eweford West, East Lothian (Lelong and MacGregor 2007) resembling those known from Orkney. A piece has recently been found at South Slipperfield Quarry, near West Linton in the Scottish Borders (unpublished). The stone maceheads, and the two carved stone balls that have been found in south-east Scotland, could also signify the adoption of the material culture that was in use in Orkney, arguably by an elite, around 3000 BC. Carved stone balls could also have been adopted from links with Aberdeenshire, where they are very numerous. It is a moot point, however, whether any of the very few stone circles known from south-east Scotland were constructed as a response to seeing the Stones of Stenness in Orkney. Moreover, as Grooved Ware evolved in its particular south-east Scottish trajectory over the first half of the third millennium, it implies that connections with Orkney were not continued; this is also seen in the construction of the massive timber enclosure at Meldon Bridge, which has no parallel in Orkney. Much remains to be discovered and understood about Late Neolithic society in south-east Scotland.
Conventionally the end of the Neolithic is held to be signalled by the appearance of various novelties, including Continental-style Beaker pottery, metal and the practice of individual interment of unburnt bodies, from the 25th century BC onwards. These novelties are associated with the arrival of a new set of Continental immigrants – the so-called ‘Beaker people’ (see Parker Pearson et al 2019). Recent aDNA research as summarised by Brace and Booth (2023) has confirmed an influx of settlers from the near Continent, who had a significant impact on the genetic make-up of the population, although not a ‘wipeout’ of the local population. The nature of the changes, and the complexities of interpreting the genetic evidence, have been well articulated in the publications by Tom Booth (2019).
These Chalcolithic novelties are described in the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age section of SESARF, but one obvious research question concerns the reaction of the local inhabitants in south-east Scotland to the appearance of these incomers with their novel material culture and traditions.