Neolithic Building, Lockerbie

A Neolithic timber hall, about 27m long and 8m wide,  excavated ahead of the construction of a new academy at Lockerbie. Internally, the building appeared to be divided into compartments by walls that ran at right angles from the external western and eastern walls towards the centre of the building, creating a wide central aisle running much of the length of the building from north to south.   Pottery recovered from the Neolithic structure was of the Carinated Bowl ceramic tradition, suggesting a date of 3950BC to 3700BC. These dates have been backed up by radiocarbon dating taken from grains of charred emmer wheat, hazelnut shell and willow, which produced an earliest date of 3950-3700BC   This Early Neolithic timber hall is only the fourth example to be excavated in Scotland and its position within the south-west of the country demonstrates that a building type once thought to be confined to the north-eastern Lowlands may have been considerably more widespread.