SHED: Report on the Implementing Scotland’s Historic Environment Data Strategy meeting, November 2015

By Susan Kruse (NOSAS and ARCH)

All archaeological projects should ensure that the results are distributed in a number of ways, so that the information will be available after the project finishes. In particular, we submit information to the local Historic Environment Record (the Highland HER) and Scotland-wide Canmore databases, and sometimes to Discovery and Excavation Scotland (DES) for new projects. Individuals should do so as well. Unless we share information, it will be lost. And information on the HER informs planning applications.

Over the past years the HER and Canmore have increasingly diverged, so that one needs to input separately to both, and needs to consult both when researching. During the consultation for Scotland’s Archaeology Strategy, this was raised at several Highland meetings as an issue people would like changed.

The SHED Project (Scotland’s Historic Environmental Data Strategy) is looking at these issues and others, on ways to share and link digital records. They are made up from a number of representatives from various organisations, though few with community archaeology perspective. They published a Strategy in April 2014 and are now working on ways to implement it.

At the beginning of the whole process a report suggested centralisation of data, but this was rejected as ‘not workable’. Instead, the main activity resulting from the Strategy so far is Pastmap (pastmap.org.uk) where you can used map-based searching techniques to see both Canmore and the HER data (and others  as well). However, you still need to look at both records, and cannot search by keywords.

A screenshot of the Pastmap website

The SHED group is now consulting on how to implement its strategy, and held a meeting in November. Susan Kruse of ARCH and NoSAS attended, and these notes are a personal reflection on where matters stand after attending the meeting.

Tarradale Archaeological Project – Findings to Date

by Dr. Eric Grant (NOSAS)

Background to the project. The Tarradale Archaeological Project started as a private initiative around 2008 and was incorporated as an approved NOSAS research project in 2011. The Tarradale archaeological project aims to investigate and record the surviving archaeological evidence of the multi-period archaeological landscape of the Tarradale area and to interpret the chronological development of settlement and resource utilisation in the study area. The main activity of the project so far has been field walking which has been very successful and as data has been collected and analysed the parameters of the project have moved and the aims extended.

Aerial photo of Tarradale area with Tarradale house in the foreground. Tarradale Castle (destroyed 1308) was probably located above and below the steep bank in the field immediately below Tarradale House. (Picture by courtesy of Jim Bone).

1. Location and extent of the Tarradale study area. The study area comprises about 750 hectares of mainly agricultural land at the eastern end of the parish of Urray on the northern side of the inner Beauly Firth in Ross-shire. Historically the area was co-terminous with the old landholding unit of Tarradale  estate and the ecclesiastical parish of Gilchrist or Tarradale, which was a separate parish until becoming amalgamated with the parish of Urray in the late 16^th The historical centre of Tarradale was the old parish church, now surviving only as a mausoleum at Gilchrist. Following the building (or rebuilding) of Tarradale House in the 17^th century, Tarradale House became the administrative centre (caput) of the estate.

A large part of the area is raised estuarine beaches and that area today is flat or gently undulating high-quality agricultural land that is regularly ploughed. To the north of the former raised beaches the land rises towards the Mulbuie Ridge as undulating hillside mainly covered with boulder clay. Apart from Gilchrist Chapel and some standing stones probably erected in the Bronze Age, there are few visible archaeological monuments in the area that is intensively ploughed, although aerial photographs show cropmarks that can be interpreted as ring ditches, pits and enclosures. This contrasts with the more upland and less intensively cultivated area where there are standing monuments including Tarradale chambered cairn and an indeterminate feature which has been called a henge but is better referred to with the more general term of earthwork.

Tarradale chambered cairn

Carn Glas – A Life in Seven Acts

by Roland Spencer-Jones (NOSAS)

The Opening of the Cairn 12.10.15

Carn Glas is one of a cluster of six Neolithic cairns at the base of the Black Isle in Ross-shire. A trio of local archaeology groups have collaborated with the Adopt-a-Monument team of Archaeology Scotland in its restoration. The opening party for the “new” cairn happened during Highland’s Archaeology Fortnight, on October 12^th. Why did it need restoring? Well, it’s a story in Seven acts:

Act One started with the construction of a Cromarty-Orkney-type chambered cairn approximately 3600 BC, as the Neolithic farming package developed in the area. The passages of the chamber at the heart of the huge cairn were aligned north-west to south-east. They consisted of an entrance passage to the south-east, leading to a middle chamber, leading to an inner chamber. An excavation over two seasons by Tony Woodham in 1955-6 produced a series of artefacts dating to this period – a leaf-shaped Neolithic arrowhead, other flints, and numerous pottery shards.

Neolithic Arrowhead from 1956 excavation    (c) National Museums of Scotland