Seascapes: Navigating the Coastal Mesolithic of Western Scotland. by Graeme Warren

Seascapes: Navigating the coastal Mesolithic of Western Scotland. by Graeme Warren

Page design by Jonathan Bateman

This piece started life as an essay on paper, comprising a number of juxtaposed self- contained sections. It seemed that this would be an ideal project with which to explore the potential for creating a non-linear piece in hypertext. This article is the result of those explorations and as such it represents our early experiments in this field, and so should be read and navigated with this in mind.

The article consists of thirty six individual, potentially autonomous sections, divided on screen by horizontal lines. It is possible to read the majority of the text in a linear manner, simply by scrolling down past these breaks to the section below (but you will miss out on the pretty pictures Anna Badcock donated!). Each section is, however, hot-linked to a number of other sections through themed routes, represented by the red words in each passage. By clicking these, you can navigate your way through the seascape and create your own unique narrative. You will probably re-cross your path a number of times, but read again and consider each section in the light of where you have already travelled. To leave the seascape use the button panel prompts within the text.

We would greatly appreciate your comments on this exercise. You may email Graeme, Jon or assemblage.

Start here!

The Atlantic Ocean does give way to land, but slowly. First the Kilda isles rise, a shock of green after the open sea. Then, continuing East, the Outer Hebridean breakwater: Lewis, the Uists, Barra. Here waves gnaw ceaselessly at the soft machair, cutting away at the West coast, edging ever East: the sea has already reclaimed much and our present contours are only historical. Then, named waters, the Minch, the sea of the Hebrides, the Sounds of Canna, Rhum and Sleat. But the sea cares little for names. Waters that are one day Atlantic are the next Hebridean; fish move from the Little Minch to the North Minch without passport controls. Our named places are arbitrary – simply human. From these seas a number of smaller isles rise, Canna, Muck, the Ascrib Isles, as well as Skye with the vertical mass of the Cuillins. Finally the long fingers of the mainland. Here the sea appears reluctant to be defeated, inlets and fjords, islands and lochs legacy to the ocean, but the Atlantic is finished here for now. On these soils human communities live and work, and, if they desire, may turn their back upon the sea. The land, in our twentieth century, is home: the sea, rather more alien.

Figure 1. "The glens, peninsulas and islands of the West coast, from Galloway to Cape Wrath, would constitute an Western province the several corners of which could always be connected more easily by coastal voyages than by any route across the wooded and mountainous interior. Despite the frequence of tempests the island studded waters may at times be as calm as an inland sea from which the next high island or headland rises conspicuous and enticing" (Childe 1935,5)

On (FIGURE 1) these shores, now called Scottish, where the excesses of the weather or agriculture cut the seemingly timeless surfaces of our landscape, small scatters of stones may be uncovered. As they lie, glinting in the sun, or (more frequently) washed and gleaming after rain, these blood-stones, pitch-stones, flints, cherts, and quartzes help chip away at the edges of our 'natural' landscape. Unfortunately, when faced with the dry, prosaic language of typology it is easy to forget just what these stones are. This is very problematic, for what the plough has unearthed, the farmer recognised and the archaeologist mystified are, at least partly, the results of the work of human hands. Stones were held, weighed, tested, felt, listened to, talked about, laboured over, loved, hated, a source of pride (in a good tool), or of embarrassment (in a failure). Stones were fully entangled in the web of social life, in the ways in which human communities inhabited these places where land and sea met and meet. Stones, seemingly so functional, were part of the ongoing transformation of spaces into human places. This study is an exploration of some of the aspects of this transformation.

There is a different approach to understanding the distribution of materials. This suggests that rather than transparently reflecting economic needs, the archaeological map of bloodstone records the movement of stones by people who were joined in relationships of friendship, kin and power. This suggests that to set sail carrying bloodstone was not so much an economic decision as an act in a long game of interpersonal relationships. this suggests that bloodstone was not a tool but a highly distinctive way of negotiating personal relationships.

There is much that is interesting in such an analysis but it still rings somewhat false. Too alienated, too exact, too structural. I do not want to suggest that bloodstone was just a symbolic token akin to Kula jewellery (Malinowski 1922). I am suggesting that it was caught up in human lives, passed from hand to hand as a gift, or a loan, a tool, a repayment. Any scheme explains some aspect of this movement, the trick is to remain aware that no scheme is sufficient explanation. A tool can have meaning. And bloodstone was never just a tool.

Lacaille appeared to belie his own evidence when he suggested that 'Larnian' stone industries, developed in response to woodland, were unsuitable for `felling and shaping large timber` for boats (Lacaille 1954, 159). He had already recorded dug-outs found in carse clays in the Forth and Clyde estuaries as well as in Perth (ibid., 66). Whilst he questioned the Boreal date of the latter, some, at least, of his cynicism may be misplaced. Dug-outs are known in Mesolithic contexts in Scandinavia, indeed Andersen describes them as a `common` feature of coastal sites (Andersen 1993, 60-2). These boats are large, up to 9.5m long, shaped from lime and often including a fire setting at one end (ibid.). Scandinavian communities were adept deep sea fishers in the Mesolithic, catching ling in some quantity (Mithen 1994, 107), these boats were more than adequate for sea-faring. Whilst lime was not present in Scottish woodlands (Tipping 1994, 11) pine was available from at least the sixth millennium BC (ibid.) and was later utilised for canoes (Lacaille 1954, 66). A poplar dug-out, recently discovered in Ireland, dates to 4 800 BC (Guardian 20/2/1997). Boats need not have been dug outs anyway: hazel frames covered with birch bark or animal skins are viable alternatives.

The technologies of boat building are not really my concern. Suffice it to say that the technology was there. It is much more interesting to consider how boats, and the ability to cross the sea, were caught up in peoples' identities: mother, wife, husband, fisher, farmer, brother, aunt, leader, led…

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In fact, economic rationality and common sense undercut their own logic when applied to prehistory. Let us look at the proportion of bloodstone found in Mesolithic scatters off of Rhum in comparison to Rhum itself.

Site Period Percentage of Bloodstone Sheildaig, Wester Ross Mesolithic 1.1% Risga, Loch Sunart Mesolithic 0.5% Pollach, Sunart Mesolithic 4.1% Acharn, Morvern Mesolithic 0.4% Arivegiag, Ardnamurchan Mesolithic 7.0% Allt Lochan na Caraidh, Sunart Mesolithic 6.0% Cul na Croise, Ardnamurchan Mesolithic (?) 3.5% Kinloch, Rhum Mesolithic >50% (after Wickham-Jones 1990)

Whilst some mixing of bloodstone and flint may have occurred in earlier analyses, consequently under-representing bloodstone on sites other than Kinloch, it still appears notable that, away from Rhum, bloodstone was not utilised as a large part of the prehistoric tool kit. This has two implications, firstly: why should we still agree with the excavators that the distribution of stones is a reflection of mainland communities with direct access to Rhum, undertaking sea journeys for such small amounts of a low quality material (Wickham-Jones 1990)? And secondly, that the sea was not a barrier.

Bloodstone is very convenient for the archaeologist. A visually distinctive cryptocrystalline silica it is source specific, outcropping only on the slopes of Bloodstone Hill, Rhum (Wickham-Jones 1990). Given this, the fact that bloodstone, from the Mesolithic through to the Bronze Age, is found alongside other flints, away from Rhum, on other islands and on the mainland, tells us one very simple thing: that prehistoric people moved between these places – over the sea. This seems mundane, after all most models of coastal Mesolithic communities assume such mobility. I suggest that whilst this may be mundane it is also absloutely fundamental to understanding Mesolithic life: that a seascape must be written for this period. If archaeology does not concern itself with the day-to-day character of past societies alongside the exotica then it consigns itself to remaining as an aesthetics of the past. What was once mundane was also fundamental and may now be alien.

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This study owes much to a paper by Gosden and Pavlides on Pacific prehistory (1994). Their examination of the Arawe islanders demonstrated that the Lapita culture, characterised by shared material culture over a large geographical area, is best understood, not as isolated communities linked by dispersed trading networks, but as 'a mobile way of life' (ibid, 169), where populations continually returned to certain points in the seascape. I am not suggesting that this is a model for the Scottish Mesolithic. It is much more significant that by viewing the sea as a bridge rather than a barrier a more cogent story results. Gosden and Pavlides conclude that:

'The sea is not necessarily either a bridge or a barrier: it is what people make it. Just as the land can be made and remade by human influence, so can the sea.' (ibid, 170)

Whilst I agree with this statement I would add a proviso. 'The sea is not necessarily either a bridge or a barrier: it is what people make it. Just as the land can be made and remade by human influence, so can the sea. And in this process of making and remaking, of understanding the world they inhabit, so too are human communities made and remade by their interaction with the world.'

The excavators at Kinloch, Rhum, through their analysis of the proportions of cortical flakes in mainland and island industries, suggested that direct access to the Bloodstone hill was enjoyed by mainland populations (Wickham Jones 1990). They argued that at Rhum preliminary testing and working would take place before cores were carried back over the sea. Their argument is interesting, and revealing. Bloodstone is a poor quality stone. Indeed Wickham-Jones considered it so recalcitrant that prehistoric populations were required to utilise a bipolar reduction technique. This relationship may not be so straightforward, I suggest that bloodstone is best understood in a rather different way – perhaps explanations for its treatment could move beyond practicality. Human lives, thankfully, are not this simple.

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Islands may appear very attractive to archaeologists for here problems of territory seem to have been resolved by nature. After all, a bounded space should be the perfect laboratory for studying human societies. We can monitor which resources are moving, and from this, gain a clearer indication of human priorities in the past. An island is considered to be isolated, the sea perceived as a barrier to be overcome. This is particularly apparent in studies of Pacific prehistory where isolation is often adduced in order to legitimise studies of genetic adaptation (Terrell 1986). Interestingly, even the geographical scales of the Pacific do not seem to lead to isolation (Gosden and Pavlides 1994). There seems little reason to suspect that this is different on the Atlantic fringes.

"The role the sea plays in coastal habitation is … not purely a question of food resources, but also to a large extent a question of communications, transport, seasonal movement and social contacts, particularly in a country covered by deciduous woodland. This aspect of coastal habitation is often forgotten in the literature, but it must have been highly significant for the prehistoric population." (Andersen 1993, 41)

Bloodstone was not the only material being moved in the Mesolithic. Bill Finlayson has cogently argued that 'limpet scoops' are better understood as tools involved in manufacturing prestige hides (1993). Food may also have been carried, prime joints of meat, or antlers for use as tools (this is perhaps evidenced by the Oronsay middens (Mellars 1987)).

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©Graeme Warren 1997

SEASCAPES Cont.

'…over there, my aunt gave stones…'

'…over there, hides and meat, a great island, many many trees…'

'…over there, the sea has no end. My sister was lost trying to find an isle…'

'…your brother lives over there…'

'...over there you will find stones...'

'...over there...'

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It might be expected that I would welcome the Southern Hebrides Mesolithic Project's much vaunted 'regional perspective' (Mithen and Lake 1996, 123) as an exception to the tendency to treat islands as insular. This is not the case. Whilst the expansion of fieldwork to Colonsay and Islay is timely I cannot help feeling that new understandings of place and places are sadly lacking and that Mithen and company are still chasing the same misconceptions, deluded into believing that they are people. An early example of this comes from a paper in 1991 (Mithen and Finlayson). Following from the conclusion that red deer remains on Oronsay could not have come from resident populations on that island (Grigson and Mellars 1987) Mithen and Finlayson hypothesised that red deer may have lived on Colonsay, and proceeded to look for microliths on this island, as witness to the presence of hunting parties. This would then be considered as strong evidence that Oronsay was occupied all year round, with logistical mobility explaining the scatters on Colonsay.

The conclusions, which are based only on one site, Staosnaig, and the evident circularity of their logic are not at issue here. It is more telling that the authors' methodology exposes important conceptions of what a 'regional perspective' is. The land masses, separated by the sea, are resources. Colonsay is the meat section of the prehistoric supermarket, Oronsay the seafood delicatessen. The only human relationship with place is extractive, the gaining of food (or procurement of stone for tools (Mithen and Lake 1993)). Distance, equatable with crossing the sea, is a barrier to be overcome, separating Mesolithic stomachs from their satiation. Land is home – the sea is alien. Something rings all too familiar here.

I am not trying to argue that every journey, every casting off, every pull on an oar or unfurling of a sail was a deliberate act in games of people politics. I mean that there was a series of potentials opened up by the sea that could, at any moment, be pulled into sharper focus. That there was a temporality in a seascape which was as much about becoming as being.

Last summer (1996) fieldwork on St. Kilda led to the discovery of numerous fragments of Neolithic Hebridean Ware (Mark Edmonds, personal communication).

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Of course the sea was not just a vast social whirlpool. For Mesolithic populations certainly and Neolithic populations probably, the sea was also vital to the dull compulsion of daily subsistence. Detailed environmental evidence from Oronsay's middens has shown that over 12 different species of fish were eaten by Mesolithic populations (Mellars and Wilkinson 1980). Deeper sea fishing was not the norm, as it may have been in some Scandinavian societies, but evidence from the Priory midden suggests that it was not altogether unknown (ibid). And, yes, the mobility offered by the sea would have facilitated the gaining of other foodstuffs, deer or seals, or other raw materials, antler or stone. I deny none of this but would suggest we should recast the questions.

All the time that stories are told – around a fire, on a journey, on a hill top – people listen. Listen and learn. Learn who other people are, and what other places are. And, most importantly, learn who they are themselves. Become caught up in a way of living: ways of moving, talking and understanding.

The point is that human relationships resonate with meaning. The practice of social life, a long, on-going improvisation, would at certain points illuminate kin, gender, sex, age and power relationships. Who had the right to carry stone, or hides? Who would sail? Who could own a boat? A given material might crystallise the relationships holding a network of people together at any one given moment, before this network was transformed once again, by action.

The introduction of new 'Neolithic' technologies – clay, grain, monumental architecture, domesticates – had an important impact. By being caught up in the daily improvisations of life new materials would become central to human change over time. This is not a new insight. What intrigues me at present is the fact that all of these new technologies are intimately connected with the land: breaking, cutting, turning, shaping, moulding, growing, piling. The real Neolithic 'revolution' perhaps occured less at the level of economics than in the way that people experienced the world. I suggest that in the Neolithic people had a much greater concern with land, not in the sense of tenure or territory, but in the way that key events, defining episodes of an individual's life, were more likely to involve the land, or elements of it, than before; to involve a pot, a tomb, cattle or planting. The stories people told to each other were dirtier than before.

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My focus here has been to suggest that the sea and islands were part of a web throughout the Mesolithic and that understanding both is central to understanding who these people were. It is very interesting that recent work on the Isle of Arran has demonstrated that Neolithic chambered tombs align themselves on islands offshore (Jones and Taylor 1996). The Thoms believed a number of standing stones on the Outer Hebrides to align on St. Kilda at astronomically pertinent moments (Thom and Thom 1990). Whether declensions are valid is not significant. St. Kilda can be seen from these locations. That monuments align on an island, or are located in a position from which islands are visible is not coincidental.

Places in the past may have been so unfamiliar that all we could recognise would be contours on a map. But this is not to despair, that our present day can include some of this different life – that the yawning absence of the past is a myth – is a central joy of archaeology. Time is not distance. The past is made and unmade in the minds of the living. Here I offer a number of suggestions to the reader, who must make their own decisions, their own reading of my words: their own creation of a past. I do not ask to be agreed with.

During the Mesolithic and Neolithic Scotland's woodlands were changing. A mosaic of species and diverse micro-climates renders generalising difficult. That the woodlands of the mainland were quite as dark and foreboding as Childe suggests (1935) is perhaps slightly unlikely: the allure of primitive woodland runs strong in the glens of Scotland and the halls of academia. Yet, the heavily wooded hill sides and valleys would, undoubtedly, have offered a significant contrast to the islands. Tipping argues that the islands of the Western and Northern seaboards were, at this time, appreciably more open and varied in their fauna than the closed canopy mainland (Tipping 1994). It is not to be doubted that travelling by water was a viable alternative to overland journeys.

To set to sea, to sail or to row, becomes, in this light, a rather different event. Not a mundane extractive round, but a realisation of the wider communities that linked populations. On such a journey a husband or wife might be found, an enemy placated, a prestigious gift obtained or an ignominious debt paid off. The sea was no neutral, no barrier, but the very stuff of life for Mesolithic populations: without the potentials for life opened up by the sea they would not have recognised themselves. Islands were linked in a net of no discernable or fixed form, but one that arose from the continued lived experiences and improvisations of human beings. If we ignore the seascape that these people enjoyed then we can never begin to understand how they inhabited their world. And my aim is get closer to past lives than alienation and objective rigour might allow.

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I do not desire the power of the author and I will not appropriate it. I do not desire to define, prescribe and dictate, to see 'how it really was' or to get to the bottom of things (Steedly 1993). I wish to avoid closure, and play with resonance, to flash images, moods and ideas to you. To craft a 'tactile' and 'fugitive' narrative (Bender 1996) that relies on the reader for its constructions. To deny denial and pursue invention. To offer play and improvisation: archaeology as fun.

During the Mesolithic the populations of the Western seaboard were, in many respects, defined by their life upon and within the sea. I believe that it was through the continual interaction with this fluid world, and the worlds this opened up, that people grew into social individuals. Human identity is not given or fixed but a continually revised result of improvisation within the world. In the Mesolithic this world was very wet.

The Hebridean islands lie close together. Journeys between these islands would not have taken the crew of a boat out of sight of land (although the weather might have). Whilst this has consequences for the technologies of sailing and for the risks involved in any given journey, it is also of great interest in dealing with seascapes at a more personal level. I have spoken of the sea as a link, as a bridge to wider possibilities for individuals. Places, as understood through biographical experiences, through stories told or heard, would have become caught up in these individual's histories. But meanings shift, and places are not rigid. One year, full of friends, the next, after a slight, enemies. The point is that whilst islands are inter-visible, people can point, and talk, and tell stories…

Perhaps the island myth is a legacy of the Victorians. After all, they discovered the primitive on their doorstep – the Gael. What else could explain such backwards souls, such lost civilisations. Water was a barrier. Islands were isolated. The same Victorian myth machine that produced the great lie, of Britain's noble isolation: the island people held apart from the worst excesses of continental life.

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In summing up the recent 'Man and Sea' conference which dealt with the maritime Mesolithic Anders Fischer reacted to criticisms of the gendered title by suggesting that the term 'boat person' be used to describe Mesolithic individuals (Fischer 1993, 432). Whilst Fischer's tongue may have been firmly in his politically correct cheek he was suggesting that, as a common technological denominator of a disparate group of peoples, the boat was a useful unifier for analysis.

It might be pertinent to twist his words a little, and look at some of the unintentional senses which arise from this phrase. I would suggest that boats and the person were intimately connected for Mesolithic populations. I would suggest that aptitude on the seas, a knowledge of them, of where to fish and currents to avoid – 'boat-man-ship' – were defining characteristics of some Mesolithic persons. I would suggest that through the daily encounter with boats and the sea, through both the mundane and the exotic, the predicted and the improvised, individual's identities were shaped and reshaped. The boat person existed because it was through boats, and through the potentials for life that resonated beyond the mere technology of floating, that a person could live the only life they knew. The transformation of the Neolithic was that the boat-person, in these senses, ceased to exist. A person became defined by other activities.

Let's think about fishing rather than complacently assuming its completion. Think about setting to sail in a small canoe, with a small group of people. How long did a journey take? Who went? How many people can fit into a 12 foot dug out? What stories were told at sea (Malinowski 1922)? What rhythms of life did fishing require? (See Pollard 1996 for a very interesting discussion of the temporality of exploiting of intertidal zones).

Architecture is, amongst other things, a way of constructing the sense of a place. If these early architectures are referencing other islands, other places across the sea, it is because these islands were significant to the builders. I do not wish to define these meanings. What I suggest is simply that, into the Neolithic, we can see a concern with the wider world beyond the immediate shores. No island was an island then either.

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"There is a time just before dawn when the rays from the sun appear like spokes of radiating firesticks above the horizon … Sabarl call this time budobudo wali lakana siyayo, "the sorcerers' apprentices withdraw their spears". Every day at this time … nursing mothers awaken … descend the ladders of their houses, walking towards the sea… Slowly they advance into the water until they stand waist deep. Then they express their milk in arcing streams several times into the sea. Bending, they take a swallow of water from the ocean's surface, then dive to the bottom of the lagoon, gripping a rock as an anchor and drinking in several mouthfuls of sea water, "like a fish"." (Battaglia, 1990, 44)

Recently the term 'landscape' has received much critical attention. In a highly productive cross-disciplinary atmosphere a number of assumptions have been unpacked, opening important new spaces for knowledge. It is not helpful to discuss landscapes in isolation from their human counter. Landscapes are neither a passive stage for human life nor a omnipotent director. Our narratives should begin to move past the tired nature-culture dualism and begin to examine ways of living in places. To be human is to inhabit, to make meaning in the world, to tell stories and undertake tasks. The world is understood in specific ways at certain times (Schama 1996). Nothing is given.

I have found these words in many places: on a beach on South Uist, in a library, the pub, my kitchen, on the bus, the train, a museum, seminars, conferences, the Peak District. Washed up in so many places they seem disparate. I have tried to find some links that might join them; trawling and hooking, netting and weaving. My task is incomplete, and can only remain so.

Stories surround us, weaving and spinning their magic, catching us, and the way we live within their metaphors. We can tell new stories, or reject the old. We can change the language or the script. But we can never get outside them or finish them (Rushdie 1995). Every ending is but a beginning, every conclusion false.

Acknowledgements

There are a number of people who deserve thanks for this article, although of course, any mistakes it may contain are my own responsibility. Jonathan Bateman gets the biggest thanks. It is fair to say that his ideas and designs have totally transformed my words. Anna Badcock came to the rescue with a fantastic selection of photos of the Western Isles and Skye; the only difficulty was choosing so few of them. Judith Winters and Mel Giles have both been very supportive, sometimes showing more faith than I did. Bill Bevan, Mark Edmonds and Paul Masser have read or made comments on parts of this paper – I still appreciate their generous critiques. Finally, a thanks to my parents, without whose support this would not have been possible.

Bibliography

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Graeme Warren is a freelance archaeologist affiliated to Sheffield University, in other words, an unemployed ex post-grad. He likes prehistoric things, particularly in Northern Britain, and is sometimes found in dabbling in theoretical waters that are probably too deep for him. He hopes to be doing a PhD next year, but when he grows up he really wants to go and play in the Himalaya. If anyone knows any ways of getting grants for ethnographic work in Tibet he'd appreciate it...