Description

The monument is the remains of an unenclosed prehistoric settlement, visible as cropmarks captured on oblique aerial photographs. The cropmarks indicate the positions of at least 14 roundhouses and an extensive scatter of pits. The houses include one probable ring-ditch roundhouse of a type used between the middle Bronze Age and the later Iron Age (between around 1800 BC and AD 400), as well as several scooped houses of a type used in the Iron Age and early historic periods (between 800 BC and AD 850).The settlement lies at about 35m OD, on relatively level ground above the Motray Water to the NW and N. The monument was first scheduled in 1997, but the documentation did not meet modern standards: the present rescheduling rectifies this.

The probable ring-ditch roundhouse measures at least 14m in diameter. The scooped houses range from about 8m to 12m in diameter. There is also a larger, amorphous cropmark, measuring about 30m by 17m, which may represent a group of superimposed houses or a house with associated sunken yard. The cropmarks also indicate the presence of at least 35 pits in four main clusters.

The two areas to be scheduled are irregular on plan to include the remains described above and areas around them within which evidence relating to the monument's construction, use and abandonment may survive, as shown in red on the accompanying map. All post-and-wire fences at the boundaries of the scheduled areas are excluded from the scheduling. Where a post-and-wire fence crosses part of the SE scheduled area, its above-ground elements are excluded from the scheduling to allow for its maintenance.

Source: Historic Environment Scotland

Statement of Scheduling

The monument is of national importance because of its potential to make a significant addition to knowledge and understanding of rural settlement in the later prehistoric period. The survival of structures, including scooped houses with sunken floors and a probable ring-ditch roundhouse, means that the monument should preserve important occupation evidence. These are expected to be robust and relatively deep features that retain their structural characteristics. The monument is particularly important because it forms part a dense cluster of prehistoric and early historic settlement and funerary sites in this area, which form a multi-period archaeological landscape of great significance, providing evidence for social and economic change in southern Scotland in the 1st millennia BC and AD. Our understanding of the distribution and character of later prehistoric and, potentially, also early historic settlement would be diminished if this monument were lost or damaged.

Source: Historic Environment Scotland

Sources

Bibliography

RCAHMS records the monument as NO42SW 51.

Source: Historic Environment Scotland