Wellhill, Dunning Early Neolithic Farm – Perthshire

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Wellhill Neolithic Farm

The village of Dunning in Perthshire, Scotland,  has been revealed through excavation as having traces of human activity dating back 10,000 years. This included evidence of what could be the earliest farming activity recorded in Scotland so far, and also remains of hunter-gathering activity dating back to the Mesolithic period.

Wellhill lies on gently undulating ground just south of the village of Dunning, in the heart of Strathearn, Perth and Kinross (OS grid NN 830 142; c. 50–60 m OD). Geologically, the site sits on glacial sands and gravels derived from the Highland boundary, overlain by a thin veneer of fertile alluvial silts in a low-lying basin. Today the fields are bounded by medieval strip-farming rigs and later stone walls, but beneath the plough soil a rich sequence of prehistoric activity has been revealed (University of Glasgow).

Excavation Results

As part of the excavation of a large series of pits, the archaeologists discovered faint plough marks dating back to 3800 – 3700BC, which were most likely made by a hand-held scratch plough known as an ard, which does not turn over the soil.

Early Neolithic pottery (from almost 6000 years ago) was also found, with hundreds of pot shards recovered close to the plough marks.

“Evidence for ploughing and fields in Neolithic Britain is incredibly rare and so the excavation of the ard marks at Wellhill is a very significant discovery that suggests a farming economy had taken hold in this location only a few generations after farming began in Britain around 4000BC. This is an amazing insight into the lives of Scotland’s first farmers”. Dr Kenneth Brophy from the University of Glasgow

Excavation and Methodology

SERF Phase 2 (2014): As part of the Strathearn Environs and Royal Forteviot project, two adjacent cropmark areas (WH14.1 & WH14.2) were trenched in May–June 2014 by the University of Glasgow’s Archaeological Research Services.

Techniques: Natural-soil profiles were recorded in section; all pit and furrow features were half-sectioned; bulk sediment samples were taken for radiocarbon, Micromorphology and environmental analysis; pottery was spot-dated by sherd types.

Key Features and Phases

Early Neolithic Field Boundaries

• In WH14.1 a linear bank-slot and paired pits define an earliest enclosure, likely a banked boundary for small plots. Two small ard-mark ruts cut through one boundary pit, demonstrating early plough use.
• Early Neolithic pottery sherds (Horizon I Plain ware) from pit fills date this phase to c. 3800–3600 BC .

Secondary Pit Aligned “Field” (WH14.2)

• An arc of tightly-spaced quarry-pits (Features 38–42) runs for 12 m, aligned NW–SE. These may have provided stone for ephemeral earthen banks that have since been ploughed away.
• One of these pits (Feature 40) cuts an earlier cremation deposit—radiocarbon /AMS dating of charcoal from the cremation returned 2470–2200 BC, placing it in the Late Neolithic–Early Bronze Age transition .
• Two ard-mark furrows cut across this pit alignment, showing that scratch-plough technology was still in use in the 3rd millennium BC.

Later Activity

• A series of stakeholes and postholes around the pit arc may represent a small Neolithic or Bronze-Age enclosure or animal pen.
• No medieval ridge-and-furrow survives in these trenches, but local walls and hedges indicate extensive later agrarian re-use of the same soils.

Environmental & Micromorphological Insights

Soil thin sections from furrow fills show a sharp boundary between cultivated loam and undisturbed subsoil, confirming that the ard marks represent genuine cultivation rather than natural cracks.

Pollen from pit fills contains cereal indicators (Hordeum-type) and ruderal weeds (Chenopodiaceae), attesting to active crop cultivation in the Neolithic phase.

Mesolithic Activity

Further radiocarbon dating of the dig sites showed that the pits actually dated back even further, to the late 8^th millennium BC, meaning that they provide evidence of the first Mesolithic events in the lowlands of Perth and Kinross. It would be good to cross compare these Mesolithic Pits with those found at Nosterfield in North Yorkshire.

Mesolithic activity at Wellhill is represented by an alignment of ten small pits—often termed “halo pits” because of their roughly circular plan—that have produced some of the earliest securely dated hunter-gatherer features in lowland Scotland. Radiocarbon dates on charcoal from these pits span 8205–7525 cal BC, placing them firmly in the Early Mesolithic (pkht.org.uk).

These pits occur in a gentle hollow at the edge of the gravels, inter-visible with the later Neolithic and Bronze-Age features. Excavators noted:

• Pit morphology: Each pit is sub-circular, c. 1–1.5 m in diameter and 20–30 cm deep, with sharply cut edges showing minimal post-depositional disturbance.
• Associated features: A shallow L-shaped ditch, interpreted as a fragile windbreak or screening feature, lay just upslope of the pit line.
• Lithic remains: Occasional micro-debitage (tiny bladelet chips) within the pits suggests they were cache-holes, perhaps for storing tools or seasonal supplies that were never retrieved (pkht.org.uk).
• Environmental context: Pollen and charcoal fragments indicate a lightly wooded environment of birch and hazel, with patches of open grassland—ideal for mixed foraging and early-season hunting.

Taken together, these Mesolithic pits at Wellhill appear to mark a short-lived encampment or series of visits by mobile hunter-gatherers exploiting the Strathearn gravels. Their alignment—ten pits in a linear array—may have structured hearth placements or food caches along a seasonal trackway. Crucially, they pre-date the Neolithic field boundaries and ard-marks by millennia, demonstrating an unbroken sequence of landscape use from Mesolithic foragers through to medieval farmers in this same locale.

 

Significance in Context

Wellhill provides rare direct evidence of the transition between Mesolithic hunter gatherer type human activity, to Early Neolithic fixed settlement with ploughed fields using ards.  The juxtaposition of Late Mesolithic seasonal use, with Early Neolithic field boundaries and Late Neolithic–Early Bronze Age cremation and clearance pits shows a continuity of land-division and cultivation over nearly two millennia.

This multi-phase agricultural sequence, set in the fertile yet well-drained gravels of Strathearn, demonstrates that:

• A settled pattern of late hunter gatherer seasonal use of the site.
• Scratch-plough (ard) technology was adopted early, possibly as soon as the first farmers arrived;
• Land-clearance and boundary construction went hand-in-hand with funerary rites, embedding social memory in the very fields they farmed;
• Later medieval rig systems rest directly above these prehistoric features, continuing the same fundamental land-use traditions into the modern era.

Wellhill thus provides a most needed bridge for the gap between paleoenvironmental proxies and hands-on evidence for prehistoric agriculture, offering a template for identifying and dating early ploughing in other parts of Scotland and beyond.