Mye Plantation

NX15SW 2 1072 5299.

(Centred: NX 1072 5299) Three out of five shallow oval depressions, c. 10' by 8' by 1' deep, in Mye Plantation, were excavated by Mann (1903). No.3 on plan was a silted-up pit, with ill-defined walls at the bottom of which the tops of decayed logs of timber, placed vertically, were found 7' down. Around this was what had probably been wattle-work, the whole covering an oval 9' by 7'. Many chips, cores and implements of flint and other stones were found, as well as a bed of charcoal containing fragments of Neolithic pottery, which were donated to the NMAS in 1957.

At the NW end of this substructure, piles were placed in two irregular concentric rings in contact with each other and at the opposite end, the piles, more upright, were in a circle. The two areas of piles were connected by irregular parallel rows of logs, 72 in all being used. Traces of what was thought to be an entrance were observed on the E side.

Site 5 was similar, with 55 logs in its structure, again stone implements, nodules of flint, and charcoal were found, but no pottery. Site 1 consisted of only 23 piles, and seemed to have been only half finished. Only two flint flakes and a few stones were found here. There were traces of a passage in the E side.

Mann considered these to be some form of pit-dwelling.

L Mann 1903; J G Callander 1929; Proc Soc Antiq Scot 1960

There are five slight depressions, 3 to 4m in diameter x 0.4m deep at NX 1072 5299.

Surveyed at 1:2500.

Visited by OS (RD) 1 September 1970

Excavations in 1902 and 1951 have shown that the line of shallow depressions visible beneath dense undergrowth in what was formerly Mye Plantation are the remains of pit-falls for trapping game. Waterlogged stakes, which appeared to have been sharpened with a stone axe, were found at the bottom of pits 1, 2, 3 and 5, and the later excavation recovered the post-holes of a fence between pits 2 and 3; Late Neolithic pottery (RMS, EX 5-7) was recovered from the fill of pit 3 and also on the old ground surface beneath the original upcast from pit 2. Of the visible pits only pit 4 is unexcavated, but the line almost certainly extends into the cultivated field to the SW of the road.

RCAHMS 1987, visited (SH) March 1986