by Jonathan Gardner, Edinburgh College of Art (University of Edinburgh)

My research (‘Reimagining British waste landscapes’, 2020–24) uses contemporary archaeology to examine landscapes made from waste materials across the UK. In Scotland, I explore how two waste sites were created as a result of past industrial-derived processes and how these places have been used, valued and reimagined as spaces of creativity and heritage.

The first site, Royston Beach in Granton, north Edinburgh, is land (ca. 4.5 hectares) that was ‘reclaimed’ from the Firth of Forth using vast quantities of demolition rubble in the late twentieth century. While almost no documentary records survive of where this waste came from, or even why it was placed here, archaeological fieldwork with the materials on the site (sandstone blocks, thousands of bricks and large concrete foundations, amongst others), combined with interviews with local artists and archival research, suggests that this ‘new’ land is a by-product of Edinburgh’s widespread ‘slum’ clearances and factory demolitions from the 1960s onwards. Following the ‘itineraries’ (Joyce and Gillespie 2015) of some of these building materials from source to sea, including the Niddrie brick pictured, I seek a deeper understanding of the city’s late-twentieth redevelopment, as well as Scotland’s broader industrial fortunes. For example, when the Niddrie brickworks was in operation Scotland had over 140 brickworks; today only one remains.

At a second site in West Lothian, I examine several artificial hills created through the dumping of mining waste. Known locally as ‘Bings’ (pictured) these heaps are the sole remnants of a now lost oil shale mining industry that saw the extraction of petroleum and related by-products on a huge scale between 1851 and 1962. For each barrel of oil produced, up to seven tonnes of waste rock (‘blaes’) were produced; today this has left nearly 150 million cubic metres scattered in piles up to 90 metres high around the district. Delving into archival material and art historical archives, mapping each site and working with contemporary artists, I have documented the Bings’ changing fortunes: how they have moved from waste to raw material and are (sometimes) transformed into heritage and works of art (Gardner 2024).

The use of waste materials for modifying landscapes is ultimately a creative process even when a by-product or accident of industry – a reuse of materials that were once discarded to create something new. Contemporary archaeology offers a unique means to understand this creativity by tracing the complex material and social relations of waste substances and the novel environments that they have created across Scotland’s (post)industrial landscapes. 

References

Gardner, J., 2024. Of blaes and bings: the (non)toxic heritage of the West Lothian oil shale industry. In: E. Kryder-Reid and S. May, eds. Toxic Heritage: Legacies, Futures, and Environmental Injustice. London: Routledge, 35–49.

Joyce, R. and Gillespie, S., 2015. Making Things out of Objects That Move. In: R. Joyce and S. Gillespie, eds. Things in Motion: Object Itineraries in Anthropological Practice. Santa Fe, NM: SAR Press, 3–19.