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Until recently, deer hunting in medieval Scotland has been poorly researched archaeologically. In Hunting and Hunting Reserves in Medieval Scotland Gilbert identified medieval parks at Stirling and Kincardine in Perthshire that William the Lion created, but it is only in recent years that excavations by Hall and Malloy have begun to explore their archaeology. The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland recorded another type of hunting feature, a deer trap at Hermitage Castle, in 1996 and then re-recorded the earthwork at Dormount Hope in 2000, originally reported as two separate monuments. Although the earthworks of parks and traps display similarities in the construction of their earthwork boundaries, the individual sites have variations in their topography that beg questions about their function. This paper establishes that the earthwork is indeed a single monument which has an open end allowing deer to be driven into the natural canyon of Dormount Hope. It goes on to discuss its dating in both archaeological and documentary terms and then its function as either a park, trap or hay (haga OE). This last possibility is raised by its apparent mention in a Melrose Abbey charter of the neighbouring estate of Raeshaw dating to the last quarter of the 12th century, made by the lords of Hownam, a family of Anglian origin. This Anglian connection leads to its interpretation as a hay – a kind of deer hunting enclosure or trap known in many parts of England prior to the Norman Conquest, for which ‘hay’ place names, such as Hawick, in the Scottish Borders provide support.

This paper discusses the recent completion of Scotland’s Historic Land-use Assessment (HLA) project, a long-term partnership between Historic Scotland and the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS) (now merged as Historic Environment Scotland) to map time-depth within the present-day landscape was completed in 2015. This paper places HLA within the wider context of historic landscape characterisation (HLC) in Europe and outlines some of the new insights and perspectives that this resource provides for Scotland’s landscapes. In particular, the historical complexity and time-depth inherent within the Scottish landscape is emphasised, along with the importance of HLA’s landscape-scale data and nationwide coverage. The paper finishes with a discussion of some of the possibilities and challenges for the future of HLA and HLC projects in general, concluding that HLA/HLC data have a significant part to play in understanding and communicating the role of the past in ...

During the later medieval period, the vast majority of the British population lived in rural settlements whose primary means of subsistence was agriculture. This overview summarizes the evidence for the villages, hamlets, and farmsteads of medieval England, Scotland, and Wales. Regional differences in the intensity of fieldwork are explored, followed by discussions of nucleated and dispersed settlement patterns, planned villages, and specialist grazing (including seasonal), coastal, industrial, and high-status settlements associated with different forms of landscape exploitation. This exposes some of the commonalities between settlement patterns in the different regions of medieval Britain, although it is also apparent that there have been separate research traditions in England, Scotland, and Wales.

Any survey of the evolution of rural settlement in the period covered by this book is restricted by the paucity of datable evidence. Closely dated archaeological excavations from the period are limited, as are extant documentary sources before 1300, particularly for Scotland. As a result, indirect means of research are necessary if any coherent picture of rural settlement is to be built. The aim has to be to deduce patterns from field survey data, marrying these where possible with documentary sources to create a model of changing patterns of settlement. Furthermore, the terminology of settlement differs from one side of the Border to the other, as do standard models of settlement and settlement change, making comparisons difficult. The deserted rural settlement sites which often form the starting-point (and much of the archaeological evidence) for discussions of medieval settlement patterns differ in date and character. In Scotland the nineteenth-century clearance township is the norm, while in England it is the deserted medieval village, even though many villages were not deserted until the post-medieval period, especially in northern England. When settlement patterns have been mapped, deserted medieval villages stop at the Scottish Border, while infield-outfield systems of agriculture are treated as apparently something peculiarly Scottish. The national models tend to be simplistic (not all villages were deserted and not all townships were cleared), and most field survey evidence for northern England and southern Scotland is predominantly post-medieval rather than medieval. Furthermore, settlement patterns have been studied, if at all, from opposite sides of the Border, and the understanding of medieval settlement in Scotland has lagged behind that in England. To complicate matters further, recent rural settlement syntheses in England have posited settlement provinces that divide along the Pennine ridge, raising questions about settlement in Scotland that no one in Scotland is asking. Both northern England, particularly Northumberland, Cumberland and Westmorland, and the Border zone of Scotland, especially in the south west, were peripheral areas, far distant or at least distant from the heartlands of the two kingdoms. Yet the very Border itself, only finally fixed during the thirteenth century, split ancient political territories, the early medieval kingdoms of Northumbria and Strathclyde/Cumbria, between the kingdoms of Scotland and England, thus dividing the cultural region within which the roots of the medieval settlement pattern had evolved.

Between 2009 and 2011, the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS) worked on a new study of Lochindorb Castle.1 This work has produced the first in-depth survey and contributed towards a new understanding of the ruinous site, located upon a small island on Lochindorb and previously little studied due to its remote and inaccessible location. At Inverlochy, RCAHMS carried out a detailed drawn survey of the castle in 1982 and this is complemented by a large number of archive items resulting from various studies and excavations at the site.2 In the light of new measured and photographic data being available for comparative work, this study aims to look afresh at the relationship between the two castles, to take a closer look at their form and function, and beyond this, establish how legitimate long-standing comparisons of the two castles remain.3

The Historic Land-use Assessment (HLA) project in Scotland – a partnership between Historic Scotland and the Royal Commission for Ancient and Historic Monuments in Scotland (RCAHMS) – was designed to create a digital map of the origins of the present countryside to enable it to be managed in a comprehensive way for the first time. This was a significant new departure since before the mid-1990s the only historic element in the landscape other than archaeological sites that was considered in the planning process was designed landscapes, whereas the HLA approach has embraced the whole landscape: urban and rural. The genesis of the project was conservation, not reconstruction. In essence the map identifies any land use that has left a mark on the landscape, be it current or relict. The approach is unashamedly archaeological and evidence-based. The features must be evident on present and past maps or air photographs and as far as possible the interpretation is confirmed by fieldwork. There is no attemp...

Many upland environments are valued for their openness, which is often actively maintained by extensive pastoral agriculture. Documentary sources indicate the complexity and longevity of regulations designed to protect the hill grazing resource from over-exploitation but these systems leave relatively few traces on the ground. Consequently pollen analysis is an important method for establishing the impact of centuries of grazing on the quality of hill pastures. This is demonstrated at Wether Hill, Northumberland, where a pollen sequence details changes in vegetation composition and diversity over the last c. 1,500 years. These are correlated with historical evidence over the last c. 800years for a more complete understanding of the socioeconomic context that governed the use of hill grazing. Changes in grazing regimes had a profound influence on these hill pastures, contributing to permanent changes in the relative abundance of heather, grasses and herbs, and causing a severe decline in habitat d...

This is a report on archaeological work in two of Scotland's less well-known medieval burghs of Kelso and Peebles. The excavations at Wester Kelso/Floors Castle established that the original medieval burgh of Kelso or Wester Kelso was much further west than previously believed, being situated well inside the present Castle policies. That early settlement at Wester Kelso appears to have been abandoned in the 14th or 15th centuries, at the same time that the royal burgh of Roxburgh was deserted, probably as a result of the English occupation of Roxburgh Castle. The other settlement of Easter Kelso, near the abbey, survived and expanded northwards from the abbey along Roxburgh Street. The finding of a possible building terrace in Phase 1 at 13–19 Roxburgh Street indicates that settlement along the southern end of that street could date to as early as the 13th or 14th centuries. Combining the archaeological, cartographic and documentary evidence, it seems clear that 'Easter' Kelso, now Kelso, had expanded from the market area around the abbey northwards towards the Floors estate by the early 18th century.

This is a report on archaeological work in two of Scotland's less well-known medieval burghs of Kelso and Peebles. The excavations at Wester Kelso/Floors Castle established that the original medieval burgh of Kelso or Wester Kelso was much further west than previously believed, being situated well inside the present Castle policies. That early settlement at Wester Kelso appears to have been abandoned in the 14th or 15th centuries, at the same time that the royal burgh of Roxburgh was deserted, probably as a result of the English occupation of Roxburgh Castle. The other settlement of Easter Kelso, near the abbey, survived and expanded northwards from the abbey along Roxburgh Street. The finding of a possible building terrace in Phase 1 at 13-19 Roxburgh Street indicates that settlement along the southern end of that street could date to as early as the 13th or 14th centuries. Combining the archaeological, cartographic and documentary evidence, it seems clear that 'Easter' Kelso, now Kelso, had expanded from the market area around tThis is a report on archaeological work in two of Scotland's less well-known medieval burghs of Kelso and Peebles. The excavations at Wester Kelso/Floors Castle established that the original medieval burgh of Kelso or Wester Kelso was much further west than previously believed, being situated well inside the present Castle policies. That early settlement at Wester Kelso appears to have been abandoned in the 14th or 15th centuries, at the same time that the royal burgh of Roxburgh was deserted, probably as a result of the English occupation of Roxburgh Castle. The other settlement of Easter Kelso, near the abbey, survived and expanded northwards from the abbey along Roxburgh Street. The finding of a possible building terrace in Phase 1 at 13-19 Roxburgh Street indicates that settlement along the southern end of that street could date to as early as the 13th or 14th centuries. Combining the archaeological, cartographic and documentary evidence, it seems clear that 'Easter' Kelso, now Kelso, had expanded from the market area around the abbey northwards towards the Floors estate by the early 18th century.The excavations in Peebles have provided important information on the origins of the settlement of the peninsular ridge between the Tweed and Eddleston Water. The results obtained from the excavations at the two sites in Peebles indicate that settlement of the ridge began in the 12th century, soon after the establishment of the royal castle and burgh by David I (1124-53). At both sites, after initial dumping of rubbish, possibly to raise the ground level to counter flooding, occupation, in the form of stone structures, can be dated to the 14th century at the latest, with probable earlier dumping of domestic refuse in the 12th and 13th centuries. The street of Bridgegate was apparently laid out in the 13th or 14th centuries when the excavated site was divided into three properties aligned on that street, two of which had stone buildings erected on them. Alternatively, Bridgegate may have been the initial focus of settlement on the east side of the Eddleston, providing the access route from the east into Old Town, where a pilgrimage centre had been established at the Cross Kirk in 1261, and the location of the tolbooth (Bridgegate Building 4) in it suggests that this street was originally more important than High Street. It is noteworthy that all eight medieval buildings excavated at the two Peebles sites were of stone construction. Peebles tolbooth, the civic centre of the burgh, is the only medieval tolbooth site in Scotland to have been excavated.

(1999). Unravelling the Landscape: An Inquisitive Approach to Archaeology. Edited by Mark Bowden. Archaeological Journal: Vol. 156, No. 1, pp. 445-446.

International audience; Woodlands and pastures were living spaces complementary to village houses during medieval and post-medieval periods. Due to their ephemeral nature, seasonal settlements have left few traces either on the ground or in written records. While temporary dwellings are totally absent from historical research, archaeology has long focused on mountain summer grazing settlements, to the detriment of winter grazing ones. Those related to woodland crafts (logging, charcoal and tar burning, harvesting of bark and leaves etc) and to shifting cultivation are largely unknown. However, when spatial (distance residence-place of production), time (duration of the operating season) and technical (operational time and monitoring) constraints were too great, these activities also led to the creation of temporary dwellings.This paper proposes a comparative study of pastoral and craft-related seasonal settlements in Provence, cross-referencing archaeological and historical data. It tackles several issues, such as the identification of the drivers of temporary occupations; the characterisation of temporary settlements’ structures as such, the duration and seasonality of their occupation, their long-term use dynamics, and finally the daily life of their inhabitants. Occupied for between two days and several months a year, these settlements call into question the concept of temporary and permanent settlements.