Life, Death & Landscape on the Abbeytown Ridge in the 2nd & 3rd Millennium BC

The Solway Plain is an important repository for evidence of early historical and pre-history periods.

The work at Overby and New Cowper on the Abbeytown Ridge came about as the result of planning applications for quarries and was undertaken in the early years of the new century. At New Cowper a spread of artefacts reveals hints of human habitation from the end of the Ice Age to potentially the early medieval period. At Overby, about a kilometre away, the Bronze Age time span is more compact, and there it is possible, even at this distance in time, to discern suggestions of a single potter working on at least two of the vessels found on site.