Archaeology Notes

Event ID 715260

Category Descriptive Accounts

Type Archaeology Notes

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/715260

NT37SE 49 centred NT 35029 71002

See also NT37SW 33, NT37SW 68, NT37SW 77 -8, 182-6 and 1000-2, and NT37SE 75.

A: NT 3494 7080 - 3501 7118

B: NT 3495 7051 - 3517 7128

Two sets of linear cropmarks run roughly parallel to each other in a NNE direction from near the Old School House to beyond Westfield. Set A runs into Field System 2 (see NT37SE 50). Set B appears to have 3 ditches, the centre one more prominent; set A has only 2 ditches. These cropmarks were originally thought to be a Roman road.

Information from RCAHMS (CAA) September 1987.

Elements of this cursus have been recorded as linear cropmarks over many years. The N terminal has long been known as a ditch obliquely intersecting the Roman field-system S of Inveresk, but the S terminal was only identified in 1986 at Whitecraig, some 900m to the SSW. Measuring about 180m in overall breadth, the sides and SSW terminal of the cursus are defined by double ditches set 10m apart, the outer apparently being the broader of the two; only the outer ditch can be distinguished at the NNE terminal. A third ditch on the W, which follows a more wavering course, turns sharply E to meet the outer cursus ditch at right angles some way short of the NNE terminal; it is probably a later feature. Limited excavations carried out in 1984 showed the ditches to be shallow and flat-bottomed.

It is plotted as a cursus monument on a distribution map of Neolithic monuments covering southern Scotland (RCAHMS 1997, 115, fig. 110).

Information from RCAHMS (ARG), 7 April 1998