Pit alignment and earthworks between Marygoldhill Plantation and Drakemire, Berwickshire

Abstract

A co-linear alignment of pits and ditch segments accompanied by a bank is cut by the ramparts of an enclosure annexed to an Iron Age fort. Three consecutive pits may have held posts, whereas the rest had been used for quarrying. They may be the relics of pre-Iron Age earthworks, including a larger system of land divisions. Finds comprise a stone ard and two plain stone balls. Au (adp AR)

The excavation of plough-truncated features at Loanleven, Perthshire

“…The Loanleven alignment is quite unlike any other previously recorded pit-alignment and its classification, therefore, is difficult. Excavations at Eskbank, Lothian (Barber 1985) and Marygoldhill, Borders (Strong 1988) have suggested that the pits were quarry-pits associated with the construction of linear earthworks of the late pre-Roman Iron Age and the terms 'pit-defined' or 'pitted boundaries' have been introduced to describe these kinds of sites (Halliday et al 1981: Halliday 1982. It has been argued, however, that several of the pits at Marygoldhill Site 2 held posts and that they were related to an earlier form of enclosure (Strong 1988,128).…”