In This Section:

5.1 Introduction

  1. The Neolithic (translated as ‘New Stone Age’) is the term used for the period spanning 4000 BC to 2500 BC. It marked the end of the gatherer-hunter lifestyle and the widespread adoption of agriculture. Cultivated plants – in particular wheat and barley – made their first appearance, and domesticated animals including pigs, sheep and cattle were introduced. New technologies were also adopted, in particular, the manufacture of pottery. The use of pottery, coupled with the wider distribution of prestige items such as polished stone axes and the early appearance from around 3700 BC onwards of substantial monuments like chambered cairns, suggests a more sedentary lifestyle. The presence of large monuments also suggests that communities could mobilise a sufficiently large labour force to build imposing structures that made a significant visual impression within and upon their local environment. 
Landscape plan of South West Scotland showing topography, rivers and coastline. The plan is overmarked with the location of Key Knowledge Sites.
Distribution map of Key Knowledge Sites in the SWSARF region © Rathmell Archaeology Ltd
Landscape plan of South West Scotland showing topography, rivers and coastline. The plan is overmarked with the location of Other Named Sites.
Distribution map of Other Named Sites in the SWSARF region © Rathmell Archaeology Ltd
  1. Our contemporary understanding of the Neolithic has developed slowly, over two centuries of study. Active interest in monuments that we would now recognise as Neolithic in origin is recorded as far back as the late 1700s. Megalithic monuments, including chambered cairns and the stone circles later ascribed to the Early Bronze Age (see Chapter 5 Chalcolithic and Bronze Age), were frequently mentioned in the Statistical Accounts of Scotland, compiled during the last decade of the 18th century.  
  1. The year 1772 marked the earliest recorded investigation of a Neolithic site in the region. This was the excavation of a chambered cairn named Margaret’s Law in Largs, North Ayrshire (Henshall 1972, 396-7). Other local and regional characteristics familiar to us today had also already attracted attention. In particular, James Robertson noted in 1768 that ancient arrows had been tipped with pitchstone, a distinctive volcanic glass widely used in South West Scotland during the Neolithic and sourced almost exclusively from Arran (Mann 1918, 141). 
  1. The investigation and recording of Neolithic sites during the early decades of the 19th century appears to have been sparse. One exception was the Reverend James Headrick, who was active in Arran. He first highlighted a site which would become increasingly well-studied later in the 19th century and which remains a frequent focus for modern research. This was the Machrie Moor stone circles. 
  1. Headrick (Headrick 1807) originally described this group as comprising two circles. New surveys undertaken in successive years identified further additions, until by the 1850s the Ordnance Survey had noted six stone circles on Machrie Moor. At roughly the same time, these monuments underwent their first recorded investigations. Circle 5 was excavated by John McArthur in 1858 (McArthur 1859), with a more extensive series of investigations undertaken by James Bryce during 1861 (Bryce 1863). Bryce in particular sought to establish a likely date and function for these monuments. On encountering cists, he deduced a sepulchral role, with the nature of the artefacts recovered, which included worked stone and pottery, suggesting to him a Bronze Age date. It would, however, be another hundred years before the full complexity of these monuments was finally revealed. 
  1. While this work was underway at Machrie Moor, the methodical survey and recording of monuments by the Ordnance Survey was underway throughout South West Scotland and beyond. This resulted in the creation of the 1st edition map series and their accompanying Name Books. By this time, prehistoric monuments such as cairns and stone circles were being destroyed by those landowners and farmers who considered themselves inconvenienced by these ancient relics that impeded agricultural operations on their land.  
  1. The last decades of the 19th century saw the first coherent efforts by local antiquarians to investigate – and more crucially – record a range of prehistoric sites across South West Scotland. They were influenced by prominent figures like Christian Thomsen, whose Three Age system of Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age had been available in English translation after 1848. Prominent monuments such as stone circles and chambered cairns were a subject of interest, but so too were more problematic sites such as the dune complexes of Irvine Bay (around Shewalton and Ardeer) and Luce Bay (around Torrs Warren and Knocknab). Both locations were renowned for their vast quantities of prehistoric worked stone artefacts and pottery, often occurring in association with later material, including metalwork. This made them favoured haunts for antiquarians and collectors. 
  1. Several individuals regularly published work relating to Stone Age Ayrshire and Galloway at this time. James MacDonald and Reverend George Wilson each contributed several articles to the Archaeological Collections of Ayrshire and Wigtownshire in the 1880s (Wilson 1880a, MacDonald 1882). Another active contributor was John Smith, who compiled a gazetteer of prehistoric sites across Ayrshire (Smith 1895). Although their levels of knowledge and understanding appear rudimentary in comparison to those of modern archaeologists, their work widely acknowledged the fact that detailed and accurate recording of sites and artefacts was vital in increasing understanding of their subject. There was also an acute awareness, even at this early stage, that monuments were a non-renewable resource constantly under threat from damage and destruction. 
  1. During this same period, various types of Neolithic sites and objects were first formally identified and recorded across South West Scotland. Fred Coles, who was a prolific recorder of Scottish rock art, produced an inventory of the cup-and-ring markings of Galloway (Coles 1895). Finds of polished stone axeheads, including some manufactured from exotic materials such as jadeite, were also being noted from Galloway at this time, and a range of pottery types were being recovered and characterised. As yet, all were more widely grouped under the umbrella term of ‘prehistoric.’ The nuanced approach to prehistory that we are familiar with today was still to be developed. 
  1. The early 1900s marked an important milestone for the study of Neolithic monuments in South West Scotland when Thomas Bryce carried out a comprehensive programme of work on a total of 19 cairns, located mainly in Arran and Bute (Bryce 1902, Bryce 1903 and Bryce 1909). On Arran, he opened up the burial chambers of numerous chambered cairns. These included Giants Graves I and Giants Graves II, Dunan Mor and Dunan Beag, Carn Ban, Monamore, East Bennan and Torrylin. Although his primary interest was in anatomy and the recovery of skeletal material, he was sufficiently interested in the monuments themselves to note that each was broadly similar in character. He ascribed these monuments – which would ultimately be grouped amongst the so-called ‘Clyde’ cairns – to the Late Neolithic. Bryce suggested that they were constructed by groups influenced by the builders of the English long barrows and the French dolmens, with origins, ultimately, in the western Mediterranean. His work would later become the starting point for a more detailed analysis of the ‘Clyde’ cairns by the well-known prehistorian, Vere Gordon Childe. 
  1. The creation of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS) in 1908 brought new surveys across South West Scotland. One result of this work was the recording of a plethora of cup-and-ring markings across modern Galloway. The first few decades of the 20th century also saw important work carried out by Ludovic Mann, who was based in the National Museum of Scotland. Some examples of his work include the excavation of a series of enigmatic pits at Mye Plantation, near Stranraer, which he interpreted as possible pit dwellings (Mann 1903) and an important paper examining the use of Arran pitchstone (Mann 1918).  
  1. During the interwar period, and on into the early post-war period, research into the Neolithic monuments of South West Scotland was dominated by the study of chambered cairns. The prevalent theoretical framework, which worked on a cultural historical principle, identified a number of Neolithic groups or ‘cultures’ in Britain. Each could be recognised and distinguished by the shared attributes apparent in their monuments and material culture. One group was characterised by the distinctive ‘Clyde’ cairns described by Bryce in his early 1900s work on Arran. It was the position of the monuments – in coastal locations overlooking the Irish Sea – which made them of particular interest to prominent archaeologists, like Vere Gordon Childe and Stuart Piggott, as they were in ideal locations for early colonisation by Neolithic ‘settlers’ (Cummings 2016, 44). The term ‘Clyde-Carlingford’ was initially proposed for these cairns, reflecting perceived shared traits between the chambered cairns of South West Scotland and their counterparts in Northern Ireland (Childe 1940, Piggott 1954). 
  1. Three of these monuments were excavated by Stuart Piggott and Thomas Powell during the late 1940s: Cairnholy I, Cairnholy II and White Cairn (Piggott et al 1951). According to the authors, these excavations were groundbreaking on three fronts. Firstly, they marked the first excavation of Scottish gallery-graves. Secondly, they resulted in the first excavated example of a jadeite axe fragment and thirdly, the first recovery of a cup-and-ring marked stone through excavation from a sealed archaeological context. 
  1. Piggott and Powell still referred to the ‘Clyde-Carlingford’ of chambered cairns, but recognised a so-called ‘Galloway’ sub-group, which included Cairnholy I and II. The terminology had changed, however, by the time John Corcoran excavated the cairns at Mid Gleniron in four successive seasons from 1963. Now the group had been re-named the ‘Clyde-Solway’ cairns. This created some degree of distance between the southern Scottish and the northern Irish cairns, and allowed more scope for independent regional development. The term ‘Clyde-Solway’ became the dominant term used in the literature during the 1960s and 70s, with Audrey Henshall exploring the group in detail in her benchmark study of the chambered cairns of Scotland (Henshall 1972). 
  1. Palynological and environmental studies were more widely undertaken from the 1930s onwards. They did not, however, figure widely in the syntheses authored by the likes of Arnaud Lacaille, whose focus was mainly upon the Mesolithic (see Chapter 4 Palaeolithic and Mesolithic), or Vere Gordon Childe, who wrote more widely on prehistory (Childe 1944). Piggott included sections on environment and vegetation in his 1954 book The Neolithic Cultures of the British Isles (Piggott 1954), but it was not until 1969 that Johannes Iversen proposed a potential correlation between a sharp decline in elm pollen and forest clearance generated by the early farming communities (Iversen 1969). The importance of the elm decline – and the underlying cause of this dramatic effect in the pollen record – would from that point on become a focus for intense debate and study (see Chapter III Landscape and Environment). 
  1. The 1960s and early 1970s were a key period for prehistoric archaeology, as radiocarbon dating came into use for the first time. The technique was used at the chambered cairn at Monamore, Arran, where Euan MacKie revisited the site of one of James Bryce’s earlier excavations. It was also employed at two further sites in eastern Dumfries and Galloway, excavated by Lionel Masters. One of these, Slewcairn, was a chambered cairn with a stone chamber, while the other, Lochhill, was an unusual monument of non-megalithic construction with a stone facade. 
  1. The findings from all three sites brought about a need to revise the earlier cultural historical and diffusionist model. Absolute dating revealed the dates of origin of many Neolithic monuments to be earlier than originally reckoned. At Monamore, dates were recovered from burnt deposits in the forecourt area; at Slewcairn, from a timber mortuary structure located beneath the mound. Both sites gave a similar date of 3700 BC, placing the construction of these monuments early in the Neolithic. A slightly later date of 3120 BC ± 105 was recovered from Lochhill, again from an earlier mortuary structure predating the cairn. 
  1. Most crucially, the excavations at all these monuments revealed complex sites which showed several phases of use. What had started out as simple structures were successively modified, potentially over extensive periods. MacKie suggested, for example, that the forecourt area of Monamore had hosted a series of fires followed by periods of abandonment, with the final episode of burning taking place as late as 2900 BC.  
  1. Similar longevity of use was evidenced at another type of monument at Machrie Moor. Here, Alison Haggarty re-examined Circles I and II, which had previously been explored by Bryce. Haggarty discovered that the Early Bronze Age stone circles occupied precisely the same locations as Neolithic timber predecessors. She envisaged a long hiatus between the construction of the timber and stone phases at this site, but this suggestion was later challenged by Stephen Carter, who argued for a much more compressed timescale (see Chapter 2 Archaeological Practice). Despite these differences of opinion and interpretation, it was evident that the Early Bronze Age monuments at Machrie Moor had a long history of use stretching back into the Neolithic (see Chapter 5 Chalcolithic and Bronze Age). 
  1. This apparent bias towards megalithic structures like chambered cairns and stone circles was understandable. These monuments had survived, in many cases, as prominent features in the landscape.  Work on English sites such as Durrington Walls was, however, increasingly identifying an important timber element within an ever-widening repertoire of Neolithic monumental structures. Haggarty’s investigations at Machrie Moor had demonstrated that there was the potential for an important – and hitherto unidentified – timber component to be present in South West Scotland, too. Because these sites had left only ephemeral traces in the landscape, it was only through the widespread use of aerial photography from the late 1940s onwards that the presence of large-scale monumental structures of earth and timber became apparent.  
  1. Occasionally, though, more modest sites which did not conform to expectations were encountered, often through little more than serendipity. One example was Kirkburn, near Lockerbie, a raised natural knoll threatened with removal during road building. Excavation by Cormack revealed evidence of repeated re-use throughout the Neolithic and earlier Bronze Age for mortuary and funerary use (Cormack 1965). The Neolithic features included two slots interpreted as simple screens associated with a number of pits, with cremated human bone a recurring presence. The site has now been classified as a timber mortuary structure (Millican 2016). 
  1. Settlement sites remained elusive. By the 1960s, the five proposed pit-dwellings at Mye Plantation had been reclassified by RCAHMS surveyors as probable pitfall traps for hunting game (NRHE: 61303). Another proposed contender, the site of Torrs Warren, which formed part of the wider Luce Bay dune system, was subject to modern excavation (Cowie 1996). While a rich assemblage, including lithics and pottery, was recovered from a site that had already produced quantities of prehistoric artefacts, discernible features were few. This led the excavators to voice words of caution as to whether the area could be interpreted as an area of dense prehistoric occupation (Cowie 1996, 95).  
  1. The 1970s saw a move away from cultural historicism. Some individuals, including Euan MacKie, still advocated that megalithic monuments, and in particular stone circles, had been built at the behest of a highly skilled and mobile ‘caste’ of priests, who influenced designs and building techniques across extensive distances (MacKie 1977). Balanced against this view was a more regional approach favoured by Colin Renfrew and others, which suggested that a spontaneous and roughly contemporary origin for megalithism had occurred in multiple centres. Renfrew argued for an increasing focus on ‘social archaeology,’ which moved beyond questions of typology, point(s) of origin and the mapping of distinct social groups across discrete areas of space and time (Renfrew 1983).  
  1. Undeterred by the lack of settlement evidence, Renfrew used the chambered cairns of Arran to argue for the organisation of Neolithic society into what he described as a ‘segmental’ society. Here, areas of agricultural land broadly similar in size were divided amongst various fairly homogenous and undifferentiated communities who used these tombs as territorial markers (Renfrew 1983). Rather than try and find external sources for each trait evident in the various cairn types, there was a move towards seeing these cairns as composed of various elements, or ‘modules,’ such as chamber, passage, forecourt and mound. These could be combined and used in various ways as required by the builders and the community they represented (Masters 1981b).  
  1. Later in this decade, an important programme of excavation and survey was undertaken on Arran by John Barber. Work focused on Machrie Moor and its environs, revealing evidence for prehistoric field systems, some of which appeared to have their origins in the Neolithic (Barber 1997).  
  1. The period spanning the 1960s to 1980s also saw important research carried out into various elements of Neolithic material culture. During the late 1960s, James Williams compiled a list of known finds of Neolithic polished stone axes (Williams 1970), with a view to preparing the ground for later thin-section analysis work (see Chapter 2 Archaeological Practice). Around a decade later, Williams Thorpe and Thorpe published a paper detailing the distribution and sources of archaeological pitchstone in northern Britain (Williams Thorpe and Thorpe 1984). 
  1. By the 1990s, the processual approach was, in turn, being criticised and questioned. Processual models of societal change were accused of being overly determined by environmental factors, relegating the important role of individual choice and human agency. The work of Hodder and others proposed that material culture and architecture might function as a text, through which human actions and interactions were expressed. Although the linguistic element of these interactions was lost, there was still a potential for archaeologists to read this text through the physical props which formed the material backdrop to these interactions (Hodder 1991). The structures underpinning Neolithic society could be reproduced in its existing form or challenged, and the relations of power exposed through the way in which various elements of material culture and architecture operated. 
  1. The creation of the Neolithic Studies Group in 1984 played a significant role in raising the profile of Neolithic studies amongst students and early-career researchers, allowing a forum for regular debate and discussion (Darvill and Brophy 2009). At this time, however, the prehistoric sites and landscapes of Orkney and Wessex received particular prominence in academic research. This led the Scottish archaeologist Gordon Barclay to complain that lowland Scotland had been neglected in favour of what he termed the ‘luminous centres’ (Barclay 2001, 16).  
  1. Despite the dominance of Orkney and Wessex, some postgraduate students opted to undertake research in the region. In the early 1980s, Christine Perry carried out a spatial analysis of the chambered cairns of Arran (Perry 1984). A preliminary report of this research was included in a 1983 British Archaeological Report edited by Bruce Proudfoot (Proudfoot 1983). Perry suggested that the distribution of chambered cairns (based on a study focused on the Sliddery Water) inferred a more mixed economy than had previously been argued (Perry 1983). Another postgraduate student who was undertaking research at around the same time was David Robinson.  Robinson used pollen analysis to provide greater insights into the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition and the adoption of farming, identifying evidence of cereal cultivation and tree management on Arran which pre-dated the elm decline (Robinson 1981). Like Perry, Robinson had a short paper published in Proudfoot’s 1983 volume. This publication also featured another paper that looked specifically at Neolithic Arran. Authored by David Davidson, it focused on the Neolithic chambered cairn at East Bennan. Davidson considered how soil conditions might have influenced the distribution of chambered cairns, arguing that sites might either be located on the margins of good arable ground or sited centrally in a more varied area where steepness allowed drainage (Davidson 1983). 
  1. Focusing on the Firth of Clyde, Isobel Hughes looked at six types of Neolithic and Early Bronze Age sites, including chambered cairns, prehistoric rock art and stone circles. Hughes looked at the historicity of the monuments and how their use changed over time, avoiding the rigid constraint usually involved in period-based studies (Hughes 1987). At a slightly later date, Jane Murray, studying at the University of Edinburgh, carried out a regional study of the Neolithic monuments south of the Forth (excluding western Galloway). This research considered the problem posed by the fact that areas which produced plentiful Neolithic finds often did not reveal a corresponding high number of sites, suggesting a problem of poor survival (Murray 1994).  
  1. Both Hughes and Murray contributed papers to the Glasgow-based journal Scottish Archaeological Review (SAR) (Hughes 1988 and Murray 1991). In the intellectually combative spirit that was often a feature of the SAR, Murray’s paper on the Clyde-Solway cairns provided a riposte to Hughes’ earlier paper on the Firth of Clyde Region. Hughes, in turn, critiqued several earlier papers, in particular Renfrew’s study of the cairns of Arran (Renfrew 1983). Shannon Fraser, at the University of Glasgow, examined the use of space in Neolithic chambered cairns on Arran and how they functioned, both architecturally and within their wider landscape (Fraser 1991). Vicki Cummings, based at Cardiff University, studied the origins of monumentality in South West Scotland (Cummings 2001).  
  1. It was not, however, until 2001 that the Neolithic Studies Group devoted a meeting to the problem of regionality (Barclay and Brophy 2007). It is notable that amongst the contributors to the follow-up publication was Cummings, whose paper explored regional diversity in South West Wales and South West Scotland (Cummings 2009).  
  1. During the 1990s and early 2000s, one eminent figure of post-processual archaeology – Julian Thomas – undertook a series of excavations in Dumfries and Galloway. Thomas had studied Neolithic Wessex during his PhD research and wrote an important text examining the Neolithic in southern Britain (Thomas 1991). Thomas’s excavations focused on two groups of Neolithic monuments; in both cases, they contributed to what he might term ‘ritualised landscapes.’  The first group was located within the valley of the River Nith: they comprised the cursus monuments of Holywood North and Holywood South, the timber post-built avenue at Holm and a henge monument, Pict’s Knowe. The second group was located much further to the west: these comprised a palisaded enclosure at Dunragit, and an earlier post-defined cursus, near an artificial mound of putative Neolithic date at Droughduil. 
  1. While the pits were suggestive of occupation, the nature and form of settlement remained uncertain. In the 2000s, however, several sites finally revealed potential examples of early Neolithic house structures which could be paralleled elsewhere in Scotland. Rectangular arrangements of postholes were identified as Neolithic timber halls at Laigh Newton in 2003 and Lockerbie Academy in 2006. Further potential Neolithic rectangular structures were reported by from Station Brae, near Irvine (Addyman 2004) and Hillhouse Farm, Kilmarnock in 2017. 
  1. As Thomas examined this varied group of Neolithic ritual monuments, a number of new sites were also being discovered through developer-led archaeology. A significant number of these archaeological investigations revealed only isolated pits or groups of pits occurring in the landscape. These features might contain charred organic material, such as cereal grains or hazelnut shells, or artefactual evidence, such as pottery sherds or worked stone objects. In 1993, a single pit was identified during archaeological survey undertaken as part of a pipeline at Carzield. Another pit, which produced a fragment from a polished stone axe made of Langdale tuff from Cumbria, was identified at Fox Plantation, near Stranraer, in 1996 (MacGregor 1996). In this case, it occurred in association with a more complex timber setting, which was excluded from the archaeological works and which remains unexplored.
  1. On rare occasions, evidence for more substantial timber post-built monuments has been recovered. These could, potentially, represent the fragmentary remains of what were once much larger monument complexes, perhaps comparable with excavated examples at Dunragit, Holm and Holywood North.
  1. The site at Curragh South, near Girvan, may provide one example. Here, a fragmentary alignment of timber posts produced an early Neolithic date, supported by the presence of carinated bowl sherds. The multi-period site at Hunterston, near West Kilbride, may be another. At this site, the main evidence for Neolithic activity yielded a Late Neolithic date. This focused on a marked hollow in the landscape, which also produced evidence of Mesolithic and early Neolithic activity. Late Neolithic dates were obtained from a sub-rectangular timber post-built enclosure. This structure surrounded the hollow, which was also used intensively in the Bronze and Iron Ages (see Chapter 6 Chalcolithic and Bronze Age and Chapter 7 Iron Age). The site also produced Grooved Ware pottery.
  1. Finds of Neolithic pits, seemingly not associated with obvious structural evidence, continued, with examples reported from Ayrshire (such as Ayr Academy, Barassie and Monkton) and Dumfries and Galloway (Townhead of Greenlaw, Castle Douglas). Occasional opportunities to excavate ostensibly Early Bronze Age sites like stone circles have also helped to confirm the considerable time depth of these monuments. A toppled standing stone at Clochmabanestane, for example, produced a date range spanning the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age from carbonised material retrieved from an adjacent trench. 
  1. The 2000s also saw the excavation of two of the ‘Bargennan’ type cairns by Vicki Cummings and Chris Fowler. Both of these cairns – the White Cairn itself and Cairnderry – revealed a long history of use which began in the Neolithic and extended well into the Bronze Age (see Chapter 6 Chalcolithic and Bronze Age). 
  1. The acquisition of all these new datasets and the interrogation of this data – albeit in the somewhat myopic context of post-excavation analyses – resulted in a much more nuanced approach to Neolithic studies. In the time of the cultural historians, it was much more straightforward to study the Neolithic as a block. The acceptance of regional origins for so many of the distinctive artefact and monument types meant that questions were increasingly asked about how existing social structures had been transformed and why change took place. What were the mechanisms that underpinned the transition from a gatherer-hunter based economy in the Mesolithic (see Chapter 4 Palaeolithic and Mesolithic) to an agriculture-based economy in the Neolithic? Opinions differed: Alison Sheridan proposed that elements of the Neolithic life-way were introduced through the movement of people from mainland Europe, although envisaging a more complex and nuanced scenario than that associated with cultural historic arguments (Sheridan 2003). Thomas, by contrast, argued instead for a ‘Neolithic package,’ in which various elements of the Neolithic lifestyle might be picked up and used by communities which had previously been gatherer-hunter in their subsistence strategies. 
  1. The situation was similar with respect to the end of the Neolithic and the transition to the Bronze Age (see Chapter 6 Chalcolithic and Bronze Age). Questions were asked regarding the role played by the control and circulation of metal, in the transformation of Neolithic society.  While the appearance of metal might be assumed to mark the beginning of the Bronze Age proper, some argue that the early use of metal occurs within a society which remained, in many aspects, Neolithic in character. This period, now recognised by some as the ‘Chalcolithic,’ saw specific pottery types – in particular, Beakers – utilised in a way which may have challenged orthodox Neolithic thought and practice and in due course transformed it.  
  1. Recent research into Neolithic material culture has yielded particularly rich results in the study of archaeological pitchstone. In the early 2000s, a four-year project called the Scottish Archaeological Pitchstone Project (SAPP) revisited work carried out in the 1980s by Williams Thorpe and Thorpe into the sourcing and distribution of archaeological pitchstone (Williams Thorpe and Thorpe 1984). Pitchstone was being increasingly recognised within lithics assemblages from archaeological excavations across Scotland, and occasionally further afield, so the SAPP aimed to undertake new research into its sourcing, distribution and circulation. The results of this work were published in 2009 (Ballin 2009).  
  1. Meanwhile, the steady acquisition of new data continues to utilise the skills of local communities and interested persons to improve and enhance the existing dataset of Neolithic monuments. The plethora of rock art occurring in South West Scotland, particularly in Galloway, had been a subject of interest for antiquarians and archaeologists as far back as the 1890s. Originally thought to be Bronze Age in date, most researchers now believe that these sites have their origins in the Neolithic. The number of these sites across western and central Dumfries and Galloway, in particular, were vastly increased through the survey work of Roland Morris and, slightly later Van Hoek. More recently, the Scotland’s Rock Art Project (ScRAP) has added even more examples to the inventory. Galloway is being particularly well-populated as a result of this work, but with new examples are also being identified in Ayrshire and Arran.  
  1. The release of LiDAR data (see Chapter 2 Archaeological Practice) has allowed experts and interested amateurs alike the opportunity to identify hitherto unknown sites. Perhaps the most outstanding site discovered in this way is the cursus monument at Drumadoon, the first of its kind to be discovered on Arran. Further investigations into the character of this monument, and its potential relationship with nearby monuments such as the timber/stone circle complex at Machrie Moor, are still ongoing. 

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