Theme 2: Coastal, Intertidal and Maritime Hinterland

Scotland’s coastal and intertidal zones and maritime hinterland is a vast subject area that encompasses a very broad range of archaeological sites.

This allows for a massively diverse range of research areas to be pursued. The boundary between the land and the sea is blurred both physically and politically, and hence legislation within the intertidal zone can become confused. The main recommendations of this theme include:

  • To develop a series of partnership projects to undertake a holistic, multi-disciplinary approach to an area, such as a major Scottish Firth, researching the coastal. intertidal and maritime hinterland archaeology, as outlined in the proposed ‘Source to Sea’ approach.
  • To assimilate all specialised datasets into a national database which could be accessed digitally and would enable marine historic environment data to be characterised.
  • To develop site-specific approaches to coastal and marine archaeology which can be chronological. thematic or a mixture of the two. Examples include researching fish-traps on a national scale and developing the work already undertaken on marine crannogs.
  • Explore the whole spectrum of transport infrastructure, including historic and prehistoric ports, harbours, portages, landing places, fords and bridges.

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