Scrutiny of Aerial Photography and Lidar imagery, by RCAHMS (now Historic Environment Scotland), has identified several candidates for Neolithic sites. Ian Smith’s research on the exceptionally clear cropmarks at Whitmuirhaugh, Sprouston, in Scottish Borders, had been focused on investigating a potential Anglian royal settlement, but it threw up the possibility that a large structure, referred to as a ‘hall’, might be of Early Neolithic date (Smith 1991). That possibility still remains to be ground-truthed through excavation.
Also at Whitmuirhaugh, a ditched enclosure identified from APs has been claimed to be an Early Neolithic causewayed enclosure (Oswald et al 2001). If this were the case, then this would be the most northerly example of that kind of site. It seems more likely, however, that the ditches are those of an Iron Age promontory fort. Ground-truthing by excavation may clarify the nature and date of this site.
Systematic review of the Aerial Photography archive by Kirsty Millican, undertaken for her doctoral research, focused on identifying timber monuments of potential Neolithic date. Several, of various types, were identified, including a pair of short rows of pits or postholes at Whitmuirhaugh, which she tentatively identified as a short ‘avenue’ (Millican 2016).
It is also through scrutiny of the Aerial Photography record – and, latterly, of the LiDAR record – that the small number of cursus monuments in south-east Scotland have been identified (Halliday 2022). Likewise, Harding and Lee’s (1987) Britain-wide catalogue of henge monuments and related sites was compiled by examining the Aerial Photography record. Ian Kinnes’ Britain-wide corpus of non-megalithic long barrows and allied structures also incorporated AP evidence (Kinnes 1992a; Kinnes 1992b).