espite all this work, we still have a very incomplete knowledge and understanding of the Neolithic in south-east Scotland. Without a doubt, the development and expansion of the City of Edinburgh during its long past will have destroyed an unknowable amount of evidence[KE1] [AS2] . Furthermore, the scale and pace of continuing development, especially relating to the expansion of Edinburgh and the need for housing, means that potential evidence continues to be destroyed, or only partially explored, since developer-funded interventions can usually only explore a small part of an area due for development.
Outside of the areas that have been most favourable to arable agriculture, there are large parts of south-east Scotland that are covered by rough grazing or boggy ground, especially in the hilly parts of the Scottish Bordera. This limits the ability to carry out systematic fieldwalking (not that much systematic fieldwalking has been done in the ploughed areas). The patchiness of the archaeological record has previously been noted in Phillips and Bradley’s review of developer-funded fieldwork in Scotland (Phillips and Bradley 2004, 24).
There is, however, potential to use our current state of knowledge to inform future research. Much still remains to be done to ground-truth the potential Neolithic sites identified from APs and LiDAR scans, and further close scrutiny of the AP and LiDAR data may throw up further candidates for Neolithic sites. Following up from the results of development-related excavations – by excavating in high-potential areas adjacent to those already opened, where possible – will help to clarify specific questions and shed light on the full extent of settlement and other activity. Making the grey literature concerning Neolithic discoveries available via HERs and Trove, compiling further corpora of Neolithic artefacts, and critically assessing the date of lithic scatters, will facilitate the compilation of a reliable overall distribution map for Neolithic activity in south-east Scotland.
Key questions that can be tackled through such work are as follows:
1. Is the ‘hall’ at Whitmuirhaugh, Sprouston, Scottish Borders, of Early Neolithic date, as is suspected (Smith 1991)?
2. Can the nature of the Neolithic activity at the findspot of Early Neolithic cremated human bone at Duns Law Farm, Scottish Borders be clarified by expanding the excavated area beyond that relating to the topsoil stripping for a water main (Anderson 2017)?
3. When were the non-megalithic long cairns at Harlaw Muir, The Mutiny Stones, Langknowe and Caverton Hillhead constructed? And even though Caverton Hillhead has been destroyed and Harlaw Muir damaged, might there be any trace surviving that would repay fieldwork?
4. What date are the cursus monuments that have been identified from aerial photographs at East Linton, East Lothian and from LiDAR at Upper Whitfield, Scottish Borders? Also, when was the Monktonhall Junction multi-ditched cursus, partly excavated by William Hanson, constructed?
5. Is the line of large pits, found close to the cursus at Monktonhall Junction during William Hanson’s excavations at Inveresk in the 1980s, of Neolithic date?
6. Is the site at Mortonhall Junction that is listed in Trove as ‘possible Neolithic mortuary structure’ and that was partially exposed during Murray Cook’s developer-funded excavation in 2001, a Neolithic mortuary structure? If it is, then along with the Monktonhall cursus and the line of large pits found by Hanson, this may indicate a focus of Early Neolithic activity, around 40 kilometres to the west from that seen at Eweford West, Pencraig Hill, Doon Hill and East Linton.
7. Are the short parallel rows of posts at Sprouston part of a timber ‘avenue’ and, if so, is this of Neolithic date? The same applies to the longer alignment of paired rows at Kirklands, Scottish Borders.
8. Is the penannular enclosure at Overhowden a Late Neolithic single-entrance henge? The same applies to the site on Rachan Hill; and the other sites, identified from aerial photographs, that had previously been considered as potential henges but then dismissed, might merit investigation.