Hunters, gatherers and fishers
           - Eddleston’s first settlers

When did people first settle in the Borders?

Artist’s impression of a party of Mesolithic hunters tracking red deer. Drawing by Alan Braby.

Folk have probably been living in the Eddleston area for nearly 10,000 years!

As the icecaps melted at the end of the last Ice Age, vegetation and animals soon colonised the barren landscapes. By about 8,000 BC, people too had arrived in what we now call Scotland - marking the start of what is known as the Mesolithic period (or Middle Stone Age).

Stone tools typical of this period have been found in several places in Eddleston parish - including completely new sites which we have discovered at Shiplaw and Kingside!

They represent traces of the earliest settlers in our area - small bands of people who would have lived by hunting and fishing and gathering fruits and berries.

How do we know where to look?

Artist’s impression of the main stages in making an arrowhead tipped with microliths. Microliths are tiny slivers of worked flint or chert that would have been attached to wooden shafts or handles to make composite tools and weapons. Drawing by Alan Braby.

Our evidence survives mainly in the form of scattered pieces of humanly worked flint or chert. These scatters show up in ploughed fields - or even in molehills!

Prehistoric people would also have used a wide range of organic materials - such as plant fibres, wood, bone or skin - to make their tools and equipment. These rarely survive in our soils.

Artefacts made from stone usually survive well. Also, ways of making stone tools changed through time which means that they can be approximately dated.

That is why they provide such useful clues to the archaeologist.