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In 2005, Biggar Archaeology
Group, led by the late Tam Ward, discovered a discrete lithic scatter at
Howburn Farm, Biggar. The site lies just outside the South East of Scotland
Archaeological Research Framework area, but is an important site at the far
end of the upper Tweed Valley and it is almost these certain the hunters
would have travelled down the Tweed Valley to reach the site. The
concentration of lithics was situated on a small terrace, and it included
finds of mainly chert and flint. The chert artefacts were defined by
diagnostic specimens as dating to the Federmesser period (12,000–10,800 BC)
or the Mesolithic (9,800–4,000 BC), supplemented by some Early Neolithic
pieces, whereas the flints – first thought to be Middle/Late Neolithic
(3,500–2,500 BC) – turned out to be of Late Hamburgian, or Havelte period,
date (12,300–12,000 BC). The Hamburgian elements would have arrived through
a contact network stretching across the then dry North Sea bed generally
referred to as Doggerland (Ballin 2016). Today, Howburn Farm is still the
oldest prehistoric site in Scotland and the only Hamburgian site in Britain.
Learn more at:
https://scarf.scot/regional/sesarf/sesarf-case-studies/howburn-farm-and-the-scottish-hamburgian/
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