Inverness, Old Perth Road, Police Headquarters

The site was observed during the stripping of topsoil because there had been finds of prehistoric material in the surrounding area, and it was expected that similar material might occur here.

Intensive observation of the stripping revealed a few features of modern date cutting into the subsoil, a selection of nineteenth and twentieth century potsherds, some aluminium tent-pegs and a selection of golf balls. Two items are of more direct archaeological interest, however, and they are detailed below.

The first item was recovered from the E side of the site, at the base of topsoil. It is a fist-sized cobble of dark-grey flint, unworked but with plough damage. It must have been brought into the area by flint-using people in prehistory, since it is alien to the geology of the area.

Of more substantial interest were the remains of a pit cut into subsoil found towards the S of the site. Approximately 0.8m in diameter and 0.2m deep as preserved, it would originally have been some 0.8m deep. It was filled with a dark silty soil surrounded by a mix of dark soil and gravel, which contained a quantity of burnt stone. From the fill came 9 sherds of a large cooking pot with an internally expanded rim decorated by two parallel lines of widely-seperated ?finger-nail imprints. One rim sherd also had the remains of a line of small dots about 20mm below the rim. The fabric and form of the pottery identifies it as Grooved Ware of the Late Neolithic period, in use until about 2500BC, but it could be older. It is similair to the pottery used at the village of Skara Brae in Orkney, but although common in Orkney, it is rare in our area. The pit also contained a small quantity of charcoal and three waste flakes of flint, showing flint-working had been carried out nearby, even though no flint was observed in the topsoil.

Information from James B Kenworthy