EHG6012 - Fieldwalking - Loch Fleet, Golspie, Dunrobin

Fieldwalking was undertaken by R. Bradley (University of Reading), A. Watson (University of Durham), R Scott and A. Jack in 2017 in three locations: ploughed fields to the north of Loch Fleet; north of Golspie and northeast of Dunrobin Castle. The fieldwalking project was part of a wider investigation into the role of marine transportation in the Neolithic and Bronze Age of Britain and Ireland. The Sutherland project developed upon a survey focused upon the Culbin Sands, near Findhorn, in 2014. The project was initiated to assist with the consideration of the significance of one of the largest collections of earlier prehistoric artefacts associated with a Scottish dune system at the mouth of Loch Fleet at Littleferry and was dominated by large numbers of arrowheads dating from the Early Neolithic period and the Beaker phase. They seem to have been made there, and many were unfinished. For the fieldwalking all the arable land was examined by walking at 20m intervals after the plough soil had weathered. A few small fields on the higher ground north of Golspie were not in suitable condition when the project took place. Otherwise, the study area was examined in two continuous blocks. One extended to the south-west from the edge of the town as far as The Mound where the A9 crosses an arm of Loch Fleet. It covered the edge of the Littleferry peninsula, and the drained wetland to its north as far as the former shoreline beside the main road. The low-lying land was included because similar work at Culbin had found artefacts associated with raised areas in the wetland by the River Findhorn. To the east of the town, the topography changes and here a fossil cliff separates the present shoreline from the cultivated land. The project investigated all the ploughed fields between Dunrobin Castle and the Iron Age broch of Carn Liath: a distance of 2km. Almost four square kilometres of ploughsoil were investigated by walking at 20m intervals, but there were virtually no finds on the small areas of raised ground within the drained wetland. The only exception was the blank for a shale arm ring of Iron Age date. Only 125 lithic artefacts were recovered. The great majority were in two concentrations. The ‘south-western’ group was beside the former margin of Loch Fleet and included 45 artefacts (Illus 4 and 5). An ‘eastern’ concentration in between Carn Liath and Dunrobin Castle contained another 69 items. Such low density scatters resemble those identified in similar projects on the Black Isle and at Culbin. There were not many distinctive artefacts, and they were represented in both the groups of fields. The few blades might be of Mesolithic or earlier Neolithic date. Otherwise, the only closely dateable artefact was a barbed and tanged arrowhead found on the edge of the northern concentration of finds, The original findspots are inaccessible today, but the programme of fieldwalking in the surrounding area confirmed their exceptional character. Perhaps this remote location was chosen as a production site because of the specialised roles played by the artefacts made there. In the resulting published report, the results of this project are compared with similar evidence from the Culbin and Luce Sands. <1>