New people arrived from the Continent around or slightly after 2500 BC. This is seen in the results of aDNA analysis of slightly later, Early Bronze Age human remains from south-east Scotland, which has revealed the ‘steppe ancestry’ genetic signature typical of so many Beaker-users in Britain. This analysis showed that two of the individuals studied had ancestry from north Germany (Olalde et al 2018; Patterson et al 2021). These immigrants from the Continent are likely to have come for a variety of reasons, over several generations, and were in no sense refugees. They introduced a range of novel material culture, practices and traditions into Britain, principally:
- Beaker pottery – a style of pottery current over much of the Continent;
- Knowledge of metal: copper and gold, although no gold artefacts of this period have yet been found in this part of Scotland;
- A Continental tradition of individual burial, by inhumation, with the deceased often laid out slightly on the side, with legs and arms contracted, as if asleep;
- A novel style of archery gear, featuring the use of barbed-and-tanged and hollow-based arrowheads, along with stone wristguard-ornaments and belt fittings.
The evidence for the Chalcolithic inhabitants of south-east Scotland comes from funerary, domestic and monumental contexts. A cairn at Drumelzier, Scottish Borders produced an All-Over-Cord-decorated Beaker that is typical of Continental Beaker pottery of around the 25th century BC, along with a sherd of a second vessel, a flint saw and 13 flint and chert flakes (Craw 1931, 363-72). Also present under the Drumelzier cairn, and probably used as a cist cover, was a slab bearing by-then ancient ‘rock art’ in the form of pecked concentric circles.
Radiocarbon dating has established that several other cists in south-east Scotland contain Beakers of Chalcolithic date (Sheridan 2007a), including one from Ruchlaw Mains, East Lothian (Ashmore et al 1982). These dates help to establish the local typochronology of this ceramic tradition. One such cist, at Skateraw, East Lothian, offers an intriguing insight into the funerary practice here (Cruden 1958). The remains of a young adult male were found with his left arm placed where his right arm should be, and vice versa, as if the body had partly decomposed before burial. Alternatively, perhaps someone re-opened the cist long after the burial and had rearranged the skeleton, perhaps removing a bone or two. The remains have been re-dated, following initial radiocarbon dating for NMS in 2004, by the Beaker People Project, producing a result of 2460-2200 cal BC (OxA-V-2164-39, 3846±29 BP; (Parker Pearson et al 2019). Isotopic analysis carried out for that project confirmed that the man had spent his childhood in the area.
The evidence for ‘domestic’ activity comes mainly from coastal ‘midden’ sites in East Lothian that are highly likely to be of Chalcolithic date: ‘Tusculum’ house, North Berwick (Cree 1908) and Hedderwick (Callander 1929). It is possible that the Beaker-associated activity at Archerfield Estate, Gullane (Curle 1908) is also of Chalcolithic date but this needs to be confirmed through radiocarbon dating. Radiocarbon dates from the timber ‘avenue’ and enclosure or ‘circle’ at Eweford East, East Lothian (Shearer and MacLellan 2007) provide evidence for monument construction during the Chalcolithic.