Landscape and environment in prehistoric West Mainland, Shetland: Fid-Bau Portal

Landscape and environment in prehistoric West Mainland, Shetland

Edwards, Kevin J. / Whittington, G.

The archaeological landscape of Shetland's West Mainland is characterised by extensive field and settlement systems, dating back to Neolithic and Bronze Age times. Field walls, lynchets, houses, clearance and burial cairns survive as a result of burial beneath blanket peat and a lack of subsequent cultivation. The existence of peat, sub-peat soils and loch deposits has enabled pollen-analytical investigations of vegetational, environmental and land use change to take place.

Evidence from two deep basins is contrasted with the spatially-precise data obtained from a large number of sub-peat soil pollen profiles closely associated with the archaeological features. Although this is part of a continuing long-term study, it is possible to say that Neolithic communities had access to birch and hazel woodlands and that clearance and probable pastoral activity led to soil erosion. Heath land and blanket peat were early vegetational elements in the landscape. Spatial patterning is evident in the soil pollen records which may portray events towards the end of the lives of the settlements; by then, soils were thin and poor, and arable activity was probably subservient to pastoralism.

Apart from the spatial disposition of vegetation, the evidence raises questions of soil status and degradation, the purpose of clearance cairns, ard cultivation, the relative importance of pastoral and arable activities, and social and economic concerns at the regional scale.