Rapidly changing worlds. Finding the earliest human occupations on Scotland's north-west coastline. (20th May 2021) - Hardy, Karen
Abstract: During the Late Glacial and Early Holocene periods Scotland was a mountainous north-westerly peninsula of Europe. Recently, a small number of sites across Scotland have demonstrated a human presence here from several continental Late Glacial and Early Holocene cultural periods including the late Hamburgian Havelte, Federmesser, Ahrensburgian and Fosna-Hensbacka which date to approximately 14, 500–10, 500 BP. But the discovery of sites, even on current emerged coastlines is haphazard. Artefacts occasionally appear by chance from underwater contexts discovered by accident, while a small number of known sites are situated in intertidal zones. Broad sea level reconstructions using high resolution survey methods, particularly offshore morphological landform studies and recovery and identification of microfossils from cored soil samples, are building an image of relative sea levels (RSL) throughout the Pleistocene and Holocene in Scotland and demonstrate the very significant role of isostatic recovery as well as eustatic sea level rise in the RSL during the Late Pleistocene and early to mid-Holocene. Yet very little is known on a smaller scale and few regional sea-level curves exist. On the north-west coast, the isostatic effects can be highly localised and variable and sometimes several different sea levels of different ages can be found interspersed with no easy way to reconstruct their relative ages. This paper outlines the current evidence for early prehistoric intertidal archaeology in western Scotland and discusses a research strategy to build on this. Based on current evidence and with such a fragmented coastline, meaning that the RSL data that exists cannot be easily extrapolated, the best way forwards at present is to pinpoint areas with potential for submerged remains based on archaeological evidence for distribution patterns of onshore lithic scatters and also evidence of rolling that might suggest artefact movement. In the future, when more RSL and geomorphological data become available and more sites are found that permit development of a local predictive model, offshore landscapes could be selected for targeted underwater survey.