archaeology

18SPRING 2015Reconstructing late Neolithic cultural landscapes in ArgyllDr Richard Tipping, Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Stirling; Dr Aaron Watson, Monumental CreativeHeritage Interpretation; Dr Andrew Jones, Department of Archaeology, University of SouthamptonKilmartin has the most extraordinaryassemblage of Neolithic and Bronze Agearchaeological sites in mainland Scotland.The first image is of a small valley, that ofthe River Add in Argyll, just before it flowsinto the Kilmartin Glen and out to sea. Thesecond image is from the same hillsidesome 4,400 years ago.The reconstruction of prehistoriclandscapes from scientific techniquesis rarely so spatially precise as to berecreated in this way, but such was theneed in trying to understand how peoplein the late Neolithic regarded, livedalongside, and experienced the rockart – beautiful cup-&-ring carvings – beingmade on isolated rock knolls on thevalley floor, the lower-right of the secondimage. No-one has successfully definedthe landscape context of this art, oraddressed questions about who the artwas for. Was it hidden, for example, orshared by all?To begin to answer such questions in anArts & Humanities Research Council grantto Andrew Jones and Richard Tipping,we applied quite standard scientifictechniques but very intensively acrossonly a few square kilometres of ground.So what are you looking at? First, pollenanalysis was used to understand the plantcommunities, but pollen analysis with atwist. We sought two types of pollen site:one that would receive pollen from thehills in general, and a second that wouldgive us the local, fine detail. The uplandsabove the valley floor were wooded, an oakhazel-birchforest that was barely alteredby people from its natural state. There isa sense of herders passing lightly throughthe wood, but no more. The valley floor andsides were, on the other hand, given overentirely to mixed farming. The late Neolithic(some might say the Copper Age) was thefirst time that agriculture of this scale andorderliness appeared in the valley.The pollen site that described this farmedlandscape is very small: you can almoststep over it. It’s marked in the secondimage in the middle-right by alder andwillow bushes around an old river channel.The pollen site is in amongst the fieldsand the meadow. The valley floor was grazed, more likelyby cattle than by sheep from the herb assemblage (Aaron,who made the second image, made them the distinctiveChillingham white cattle), sufficient to open up bare,trampled ground. You can’t quite see the River Add. Therewere many abandoned channels, and radiocarbon dating thepeat that filled them upon abandonment allowed us to positionthe active channel tucked in against the valley side; today ithas shifted to the opposite side of the valley. The river wasshallow and was easily fordable, allowing the procession ofpeople to the rock art.