The watching brief and excavation of a house plot in the north of Tiree revealed evidence, although limited in extent, of a wooden structure, defined by postholes and its possible floor deposit. A small number of hearths together with larger pits including a stone-lined one were also excavated. The environmental samples which included evidence of wild food resources, barley, charcoal from fuel as well as burnt peat, suggested there were two phases of activity at the site – later Neolithic and into the Bronze Age. The typo-technological attributes of the flint artefacts also suggested activity in the later Neolithic/early Bronze Age period, and the few sherds of pottery that survived also indicated use of the site, possibly as early as the middle Neolithic and into the later Neolithic and the Bronze Age. The two radiocarbon dates that were returned from later features suggested a Mesolithic time-frame, indicating the danger of reliance on hazel nutshell for dating purposes.

Proposed development at Popple Burn Park, Ednam, Scottish Borders, prompted an archaeological evaluation in May 2018, which revealed several archaeological features. With the archaeological potential of the area identified, three subsequent phases of excavation between 2018 and 2021 revealed multi-period activity that ranged from the Bronze Age to the medieval period, evidenced through analysis of pottery, and a programme of radiocarbon dating. Several linear features that ran across the site likely represent the remains of former field boundaries, with the remaining features comprising pits and postholes that did not form any obvious structures. It is likely that the features encountered at Popple Burn Park are part of a wider zone of rural medieval activity centred beyond the extents of the excavated area, with sporadic elements of earlier prehistoric activity.

This article is both an update to an earlier article ( Adamson 2008 ) insofar as it considered the Moat Pit coal mine but it is also a study for the first time of the wider coal mining enterprise of the Bruce family in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries at Culross, Fife. The article demonstrates that the previous understanding of where the landward shaft of the Moat Pit was located was incorrect. It moves that entrance westwards to a newly identified shaft on the shore known as the Waterdie pit, which is also a possible location for the Egyptian Wheel drainage mechanism. It highlights the importance of the nearby and disregarded Dunimarle Pier to the mining operation. New documentary evidence has led to a re-calculation of the Moat Pit coal mine output which increases this very substantially. An analysis of the other operational coal shafts in Culross in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries point to the Moat Pit having had both an earlier prototype and also a potential successor. These had linked onshore shafts to moated structures located between low and high tides, exactly as with the Moat Pit. There is evidence of the very extensive coal mining operations carried on by the sons and grandsons of Sir George Bruce which has been previously little understood. The mining innovation of the Bruce family is considered and found to be impressive.

Archaeological works at Weirston Road, Kilwinning, revealed prehistoric activity dating from the Neolithic to the Middle Iron Age. Iron Age settlement evidence includes numerous overlapping ring-groove structures with diametrically opposed entrances, representative of a regional roundhouse variant. While the Early to Middle Iron Age activity dominates the site, the finds assemblage includes Late Neolithic pottery and Late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age lithic material, demonstrating new evidence for Neolithic activity in the area.