Overhailes, East Lothian
The truncated structural evidence from Overhailes consists of stake-holes and pits that were interpreted as evidence for a ‘sub-circular or horseshoe-shaped building’ built of upright oak stakes. This was located beside a possible oval yard or stake-built enclosure, that is assumed to have had wattlework walling (MacGregor and Stuart 2007). Inside the putative yard or enclosure were two pits containing Middle Neolithic Impressed Ware pottery, that had been used for cooking food, along with lithics and burnt plant material. One of the pits had seen two discrete episodes of deposition of this putative waste from domestic activities. The radiocarbon dates fall roughly within the 3350-2900 cal BC time-frame.
The artists’ impression of these structures is speculative and it is debatable as to whether the ‘house’ would have been as temporary-looking as it has been portrayed. Nevertheless, this offers a marked contrast with the sturdy, rectangular timber structures of the Early Neolithic at Doon Hill, and it raises the question as to whether the Middle Neolithic lifestyle was less sedentary than that of the Early Neolithic, as some have argued (Whittle 1997). Since Middle Neolithic houses are so rare in Britain, it is impossible to tell whether the Overhailes structure is representative of the norm, and whether people were indeed living a semi-nomadic existence. It has been claimed that there was an abandonment of cereal agriculture and a greater emphasis on pastoralism from around the middle of the fourth millennium (Stevens and Fuller 2012), but this has been refuted on palaeoenvironmental grounds (Bishop 2015). Elsewhere in Britain, a better-preserved Middle Neolithic house at Sewerby Cottage Farm, Bridlington, East Yorkshire showed evidence for a sturdy, timber-framed rectangular structure (Fenton-Thomas 2009). Clearly, there is a lot that we need to find out about the nature and basis of Middle Neolithic settlement.
