Ben Lawers Historic Landscape Project

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Peat Analysis

2003-4 | 2004-5

Mapping Medieval and Later Land-Use In Time and Space: Palaeoecological Approaches to Measuring Continuity and Change

This sub–project will identify patterns of land–use within the estate over the last 1000 years. It will measure (a) spatial patterning of periods of agricultural expansion and contraction across the hillside, (b) the development, use and consumption of natural resources, and (c) the responses of farmers to environmental, social and economic driving forces (Tipping 1997, 2002a).

It will do this by using fine–resolution pollen analysis. Most archaeologists and historians are aware that pollen analysis is very good at describing when and how plant communities were modified or created by human beings from prehistoric times. Woodlands were cleared, heather moorlands established and maintained, soils ploughed and manured, and crops and livestock introduced (Tipping 1994, 2002b). However, most such agricultural landscapes in Scotland have been described only by single pollen diagrams, which are assumed to represent a whole region. Such analyses cannot be used to identify the spatial patterns of past settlements and land uses except at very large scales.

However, some pollen sites are known to reflect plant communities and land uses at very small scales (Davies & Tipping in press), sometimes at the size of individual fields. If we can analyse several of these sorts of site across a landscape as complex and varied as Beinn Lawers, we can start to map out where people lived and farmed, and how patterns in space changed through time.

We have explored the potential for such reconstructions within the historic period in both lowland and upland Scotland (e.g. Carter et al 1997; Tipping 1995, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000a, b; in press; Tipping et al 2001; Campbell et al 2003; Shaw & Tipping 2003; Wolff & Tipping 2003; Tipping et al in press). In addition, we have worked on understanding prehistoric landscape change on Beinn Lawers itself (Edmonds et al 1993; Tipping et al 1992).

We hope to employ a network of several continuously–accumulating peat sediment sequences from peat basins which reflect small spatial–scale patterning across the hillside, and which depict change at timescales relevant to human generations. By independent detailed temporal controls at each site in the network, the hillside can be mapped in four dimensions. The full dynamism of settlement revealed with a continuity and spatial precision not equalled by, but entirely compatible with, conventional archaeological or historical sources. This enormously improved resolution allows detailed reconstructions of how specific natural and agrarian landscapes (i.e., infield, outfield, rough–grazing, woodland, shieling grounds, moors) have developed over the historic period, tracing their origins, evolution and integration. These can in turn be correlated with the major driving forces in landscape change, economic, social, pedological and climatic.

Land Use History Report 2003–4

24 Pollen analysis (palynology) is the most powerful scientific technique employed in the reconstruction of past human settlement patterns and land uses. It succeeds because the technique applied to lake and peat sediments allows the continuous description through time of different types of land use, typified by distinct plant communities created by farmers, such as in arable fields, permanent grassland or heather moorland. The method measures the same variables whether the landscape is 2000 or 200 years old, and this comparability gives enormous advantages over the partial interpretations obtained from archaeological and historical sources. However, until now pollen analysis has not achieved secure reconstructions at small spatial scales in open landscapes, within fields and field systems, despite the recognition that resource strategies and farming practices can only successfully be understood at this finely resolved scale.

This project will achieve this. It will allow the reconstruction of changing uses through the last c. 1000 years of individual fields and contrasting landscape elements within the highly diverse Medieval and post–Medieval farming landscape of Ben Lawers. It We will produce maps of changing land use over the last 1000 years or so for different fields and contrasting parts (e.g. lowland–upland, infield–outfield–common land) of one hillside on the southerly slopes of Ben Lawers. This period provides unusually sharp contrasts in social structures, economic drivers, agricultural strategies and techniques, and climatic stresses, and the ways in which this system has evolved is critical to managing the future of upland landscapes in Scotland. The project will demonstrate the dynamism of the traditional farming system and establish the spatial patterning and chronology of successive waves of agricultural colonisation, expansion, modification, improvement, retraction and abandonment across a single landscape. It will define with spatial and temporal precision the agrarian responses to external and internal stresses in the historic period like climate change, soil erosion and impoverishment, and diverse social and economic pressures. The project will analyse the apparent sustainability of traditional farming systems as well as identify its vulnerabilities, and be able to test for its apparent failure in the years before ’agricultural improvements’, in as complete a description as achieved by historians.

We will produce maps of changing land use over the last 1000 years or so for different fields and contrasting parts (e.g. lowland–upland, infield–outfield–common land) of one hillside on the southerly slopes of Ben Lawers. This period provides unusually sharp contrasts in social structures, economic drivers, agricultural strategies and techniques, and climatic stresses, and the ways in which this system has evolved is critical to managing the future of upland landscapes in Scotland. The project will demonstrate the dynamism of the traditional farming system and establish the spatial patterning and chronology of successive waves of agricultural colonisation, expansion, modification, improvement, retraction and abandonment across a single landscape. It will define with spatial and temporal precision the agrarian responses to external and internal stresses in the historic period like climate change, soil erosion and impoverishment, and diverse social and economic pressures. The project will analyse the apparent sustainability of traditional farming systems as well as identify its vulnerabilities, and be able to test for its apparent failure in the years before ’agricultural improvements’, in as complete a description as achieved by historians.

Land Use History Report 2004–5
Peat–Stratigraphic Approaches to Historic Landscape and Ecological Changes on Ben Lawers National Nature Reserve, Perthshire

This short report summarises the work commissioned by Scottish Natural Heritage and managed through The National Trust for Scotland from 1 November 2004 until 31 July 2005. The work was commissioned to explore through a range of scientific techniques applied to accumulating peat sequences the development of the Ben Lawers landscape over the historic period, taken here as the last c. 1000 years. The principal approach has been to use spatially precise pollen analyses from a network of four sites to describe ecological changes, both natural and anthropogenic. These analyses are in turn being used, in combination with measures at these and several other sites of changing peat hydrology through the quantification of peat decay and soil erosion from quantification of inwashed mineral sediment, to provide measures of landscape change not gained from archaeological or archival approaches. All analyses are being dated by a number of independent chronological techniques including 14C, 210Pb, regional industrial pollutants and regionally significant biostratigraphic markers.

We have examined or are examining twelve peat sequences grouped within or immediately above the single 18th century farm unit of Kiltyrie (Figure 1). The sequences range in altitude (Table 1) to understand the range and chronology of ecological change and land use practices on all parts of a single hillside.

Figure 1: GIS map showing Peat Sampl Locations

Table 1. Peat sequences sampled
Site name	NGR (NN)	Altitude	Depth	Purpose (m OD)	PSA
Lairig an Lochain	594 415	549	>4 m	P	Extra–local
Allt a’ Mhoirneas	604 382	450	1.8 m	P, H, G	Regional
Burn of Edramucky	604 382	450	1.8 m	P, H, G	Regional
T16	625 377	320	1.9 m	P, H, G	Extra–local
Leacann Ghlasa	626 378	310	1.8 m	P, H, G	Extra–local
Tom a’ Mhor–fhir I	632 374	28	1.7 m	H, G	Extra–local
Channel E	625 372	280	1.6 m	H, G	n/a
Tom a’ Mhor–fhir II	631 370	270	>3m	P	Extra–local
Kiltyrie	626 370	265	1.8 m	P, H, G	Local
Old Schoolhouse	626 367	240	1.2 m	H, G	n/a
Morenish Fen	608 354	170	1.6 m	P, H, G	Extra–local
Morenish Stream	606 353	150	0.9 m	G	n/a
PSA: probable pollen source area; P: pollen analyses; H: hydrological indicators; G: geomorphological change

Most pollen sites have extra–local PSAs, and depict vegetation changes happening within a few tens of metres of each site. This allows us to resolve differences in the type, extent and timing of natural and anthropogenic changes over short distances and for the first time use pollen analysis as a mapping tool complimentary to other techniques within the project. Vegetation and land use changes as well as climatic factors will trigger changes in the surface wetness of a bog. Both climatic and land use changes can destabilise slopes and lead to soil erosion and deterioration.

This report is too short to provide results of our analyses, but the work continues through a second and final tranche of funding from Scottish Natural Heritage, and from a large research grant from the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland. The purpose of this project is to use the same techniques developed in this project on two more peat and pollen sequences within the Kiltyrie Farm unit, at a’ o’ Mhor–fhir I and in a peat basin within two metres of the excavated Medieval and later buildings at T16 (Figure 1).

Richard Tipping, Robert McCulloch, Eileen Tisdall, Anna Senior & Angus McEwan, University of Stirling

Further Readings

Campbell, C., Tipping, R. & Cowley, D. 2003. Continuity and stability in past upland land uses in the Western Cheviot Hills, Southern Scotland. Landscape History 24, 111–120.

Carter, S., Tipping, R., Davidson, D., Long, D. & Tyler, A. 1997. A multi–proxy approach to the function of post–medieval ridge–and–furrow cultivation in upland northern Britain. The Holocene 7, 447–456.

Davies, A.L. & Tipping, R. in press. Sensing small–scale human activity in the palaeoecological record: fine spatial resolution pollen analyses from West Glen Affric, northern Scotland. The Holocene.

Edmonds, M., Tipping, R. & Sheridan, A. 1993. Survey and excavation at Creag na Caillich, Killin, Perthshire. Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 123, 87–112.

Shaw, H. & Tipping, R. 2003. Allt an Laghair, East Glen Affric: recent woodland history. In Tipping, R. 2003. The Quaternary of Glen Affric & Kintail. London: Quaternary Research Association, 105–110.

Tipping, R. 1995. Holocene landscape change at Carn Dubh, near Pitlochry, Perthshire. Journal of Quaternary Science 10, 59–75.

Tipping, R. 1997. Medieval woodland history from the Scottish Southern Uplands: fine spatial–scale pollen data from a small woodland hollow. In Smout, C. (ed) Scottish Woodland History. Aberdeen: Scottish Cultural Press, 49–72.

Tipping, R. 1998. Cereal cultivation on the Anglo–Scottish Border during the ’Little Ice Age’. In Mills, C.M. & Coles, G. (eds) Life on the Edge: Human Settlement & Marginality. Oxford: Oxbow, 1–12.

Tipping, R. 1999. Towards an environmental history of the Bowmont Valley and the Northern Cheviot Hills. Landscape History 20, 41–50.

Tipping, R. 2000a. Using the Past in the Future of Scotland’s New Native Woodlands. St. Andrews: Scottish Woodland History Discussion Group Notes IV. 39 pp.

Tipping, R. 2000b. Palaeoecological approaches to historic problems: a comparison of sheep–grazing intensities in the Cheviot Hills in the Medieval and later periods. In Atkinson, J., Banks, I. & MacGregor, G. (eds) Townships to Farmsteads. Rural Settlement Studies in Scotland, England and Wales. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports 293, 30–43.

Tipping, R. 2002a. Climatic variability and ’marginal’ settlement in upland British landscapes: a re–evaluation. Landscapes 3, 10–28.

Tipping, R. 2002b. Living in the past: woods and people in prehistory to 1000 BC. In Smout, T.C. (ed) People and Woods in Scotland: A History. Edinburgh: University Press, 14–39.

Tipping, R. in press. Palaeoecology and political history: evaluating driving forces in historic landscape change in southern Scotland. In Whyte, I. & Winchester, A.J.L. (eds) Society, Landcape, Environment in Upland Britain (Exeter: Exeter University Press).

Tipping, R., Edmonds, M. & Sheridan, A. 1993. Palaeoenvironmental investigations directly associated with a neolithic axe ’quarry’ on Beinn Lawers, near Killin, Perthshire, Scotland. New Phytologist 123, 585–597.

Tipping, R., Davies, A.L. & McCulloch, R. in press. Introduced oak woodlands in northern Scotland: pollen–analytical evidence for early historic plantations. In Woolf, A. (ed) Landscape and Environment in Dark Age Scotland. St. Andrews: University Press.

Tipping, R., Waldron, R. & Cowley, D. 2001. Pollen analyses and historic landscape change at Ashentrool, Menstrie Glen, Stirlingshire. Forth Naturalist & Historian 24, 3–8.

Wolff, H. & Tipping, R. 2003. Recent woodland history in the pinewoods of East Glen Affric. In Tipping, R. 2003. The Quaternary of Glen Affric & Kintail. London: Quaternary Research Association, 97–104.

Richard Tipping University of Stirling [External Link]

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