9.2.6 Early Medieval

Regrettably, there are few examples of integrated archaeological and palaeoecological studies for this period. The research at Lair, Glen Shee, offers an example in which the various proxies are sympathetically combined and used to generate broader hypotheses about the relationships between climate and upland agriculture during the early medieval period. The pollen record suggests that cultivation was as central to the upland economy from the 7th to 10th centuries AD, as it was in the adjacent lowlands around Blairgowrie (Paterson and Tipping 2019). Cultivation at 350–400m above sea level may have been facilitated by climatic amelioration, which Strachan et al (2019) suggest could even have stimulated a 7th century AD agrarian resurgence over much of Scotland. This suggests that communities responded to opportunity as much as stress, based on good multiproxy evidence. The duration of the cereal pollen record also corresponds strikingly with the chronology for the Pitcarmick tradition at this site, raising the possibility that byre-houses served to concentrate manure for arable fields. More attention needs to be paid to the agricultural economy in the adjacent lowlands to understand possible drivers for the end of this tradition, but there is no suggestion that cessation represents the ‘failure’ of upland farming (Strachan et al 2019). In contrast, pastoral disturbance remained the dominant signal around Carn Dubh during this period (Tipping 1995), which emphasises the value of having independent vegetation histories to set archaeology in context and cautions against over-extrapolation between upland settings.

A kneeling person points to a long core of soil and peat packed into a silver coloured tube with one pointed end.
Peat core for pollen sample at Lair, Glen Shee ©️ Perth and Kinross Heritage Trust

Research Priority

Conduct systematic meta-analysis of key trends to evaluate the quality of the evidence for synchronous and time-transgressive transitions in landscape and land use. The work of Strachan et al (2019) provides an example, exploring 7th-century AD interrelations between climate and land use. This gives a broader and more outward-looking perspective that can be used to explore wider connectivity and bigger ‘grand challenge’ questions in palaeoecology and archaeology. This is needed to firmly place regional archaeologies within broader research culture and debates (eg Kintigh et al 2014; d’Alpoim Guedes et al 2016).