Excavation of a cist burial on Doons Law, Leetside Farm, Whitsome, Berwickshire

Abstract

A cist burial containing the fragmentary remains of a (probably) female skeleton, a decorated Northern British/Northern Rhine Beaker, a group of flints, a fragmentary copper awl and some fragments of burnt bone and charcoal, was unearthed by ploughing in 1995. A sample of skeletal bone yielded a radiocarbon date of 2135-1935 cal BC at one sigma. Analysis of the pollen and spore content in an area of stained cist-floor sediment surrounding the skeleton suggested that flowers of Brassicaceae and Filipendula were deliberately deposited in the cist at the time of the inhumation. A series of trial trenches was excavated around the burial to investigate whether any additional archaeological evidence was detectable, but none was found.