Later Holocene Vegetation Change, Climatic Deterioration and Human Response in the Strath of Kildonan, Sutherland, Scotland
by
Darcey F Gillie
Department of Geography, University of Edinburgh

A severe and abrupt climate deterioration in the late Bronze Age has been cited as the source of social, cultural and economic disintegration in NW Europe. In Britain it is believed that this deterioration resulted in the abandonment of environmentally marginal communities. Subsequent inter-group conflict led to the collapse of the established social order and the emergence of new structures and systems. This view is criticised as overly environmentally deterministic and extreme because the reality, extent and predictability of this settlement collapse has yet to be established. The Strath of Kildonan in northern Scotland is used as a study site where climate-human relations can be effectively assesed because it is historically and currently economically marginal, climatically stressed, possesses a rich, well-understood archaeological landscape and previous work has supported the abandonment hypothesis. Simplified models suggest that settlement viability was governed by altitude and the abandonment of upland settlements occurred preferentially, with migration to core areas in the lowlands and on the valley floor. A range of palaeoenvironmental tools (pollen analysis and peat stratigraphy) including tephrochronology, radiocarbon dating and GIS is used to test models of prehistoric settlement in Scotland, in particular that economic thresholds were lowered and settlements abandoned in the late Bronze Age.

Date received: March 21, 2001

Copyright © 2001 by the author(s). The author(s) of this document and the organizers of the conference have granted their consent to include this abstract in Atlas Conferences Inc. Document # cagc-20.