Recording a landscape, by royal warrant

October 2001

Angela R Gannon

When the valley of the River Don was selected as the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland’s next large-scale survey area, I felt as though I was returning to home territory.

Unlike other areas we had surveyed, this was one with which I had a personal connection, having moved to the North-east from Edinburgh just before attending secondary school.

School trips to Huntly Castle and family picnics at Boyne Castle, on the Banffshire coastal trail, were brought back to life. No doubt the antiquity of these places made an impression on me, but it was probably the mysterious excavation trenches on the promontory fort at Cullykhan, where I spent many an idle Sunday afternoon swimming in the adjacent sheltered bay, that really triggered my interest in archaeology.

Little did I realise then, that I would get the opportunity some 20 years later to return to the North-east to study and record such monuments.

My time with the Royal Commission has been relatively short, considering that the organisation has been in existence now for almost a century. Founded by Royal Warrant in 1908, its function was to compile: ‘an inventory of the ancient and historical monuments and constructions connected with or illustrative of the contemporary culture, civilisation and conditions of life of the people of Scotland from the earliest times to the year 1707’.

This inventory was originally framed on a county-by-county basis, but subsequent revisions of the warrant have added new responsibilities, and have also broadened the range of sites and monuments to be recorded. With no cut-off date now in operation, a Victorian church, an industrial landscape or a second World War pill-box are just as readily recorded as a prehistoric burial cairn or medieval shieling.

Rather than compiling an inventory, the most recent revision places the emphasis on the collection and maintenance of a comprehensive National Monuments Record of Scotland. This comprises an electronic database of sites and monuments, together with a reference library and an archive of original photographs, drawings and manuscripts.

The inventory programme progressed steadily across the country, but by 1986, after almost 80 years in the field, many of the counties, including all those in the North-east, had yet to be tackled. The seven-volume series on Argyll, the last of the traditional county inventories, took almost 30 years to complete, and it was clear that we could not commit ourselves to another county or region for such a long time.

Since then, we have taken a more varied approach, covering smaller areas in almost every region of Scotland and embracing the whole range of sites and monuments that are found across the country, from Mesolithic flint scatters up to 10,000 years old, to crofts and quarries that were still in use at the beginning of the 20th century.

We now focus more on the landscapes within which these monuments are set, a shift that has been made possible by developments in survey and mapping techniques. Whereas our predecessors ventured into the field with little more than a tape measure and a notebook, we are more likely to be found with a computer using complex electronic and satellite survey systems.

To give the impression that we had never before set foot in this part of the country is somewhat misleading. In July 1943, for instance, Angus Graham, secretary to the Royal Commission from 1935 to 1957, spent three weeks recording various monuments across the county. Indeed, he was even arrested as a suspected spy when he was photographing Telford’s bridge at the Bridge of Don; the fact that he happened to be using a German camera at the time could not have helped his case!

More recently, we have undertaken fieldwork in the Mar Lodge estate and other areas near Aboyne, Dufftown and Forres, as well as working with the National Museums of Scotland on the Neolithic flint mines at Boddam. All of these, however, have been relatively small projects.

The present survey area takes in the whole catchment of the River Don and its tributaries, from its headwaters in the Grampian mountains eastwards to where it flows into the North Sea at Aberdeen. It also includes the fertile basin around Rhynie.

Strictly speaking, Rhynie belongs to upper Strathbogie rather than the catchment of the Don, but it boasts an impressive concentration of archaeological sites, which complements those of the Don itself. The Pictish symbol stones around Rhynie are renowned and, uniquely, one of them, the Craw Stane, appears to have stood at the entrance to a sub-circular ditched enclosure, which is now indicated only by cropmarks on aerial photographs. Taking in this area also ensured that Tap o’ Noth, the second highest hill fort in Scotland, and surely one of the most important in the North-east, fell within the survey boundary.

In all, we have examined an area some 1,600 square kilometres in extent, allowing us to take an overview of the diversity of the Aberdeenshire landscape and its patterns of use over the last 6,000 years or so. From this analysis, we are beginning to understand the factors that have shaped the archaeological record and determined what monuments have survived, and at the same time we can draw comparisons with patterns already recorded elsewhere.

To date, the preliminary results have confirmed a pattern that is found widely across Scotland, indicating that the period of agricultural improvement during the late-18th and 19th centuries was an important factor influencing the survival and destruction of archaeological sites and monuments.

Perhaps more surprisingly, however, fieldwork has shown that fragments of rig-and-furrow cultivation have been preserved in isolated pockets throughout the Aberdeenshire landscape, most commonly in shelter-belts or in long-established plantations. It would appear that virtually every scrap of usable ground had been ploughed up long before the onset of the improvement, undoubtedly contributing to the removal of numerous sites. Indeed, the importance of arable products in medieval renders may suggest that the prehistoric landscape had been radically altered by the 12th century.

Today the valley of the Don appears quiet and serene, free from the hoards of visitors that descend on the neighbouring valleys. For them, at least, the Don is no match for the sylvan beauty of Royal Deeside, nor does it capture the romantic beauty of Strath Avon, yet its landscape is more intensively exploited, more fertile, and therefore attractive in ways that the transient visitor does not appreciate.

This can be seen by the dense distributions of archaeological sites and monuments found throughout the Don valley. For example, the bulk of the recumbent stone circles fall within its compass, to say nothing of the large number of Bronze Age burial cairns that are to be found. A similar picture can be observed in later periods with the clustering of Pictish symbol stones and a series of spectacular and massively defended forts.

Extracting the history of settlement and land-use in a valley that has been so heavily cultivated for thousands of years is indeed a challenge, but one that is not without its rewards. Many of these sites have only now been recorded and planned in detail for the first time, lending fresh insights into their architecture and distribution, and have served to underline the strategic position of the Don in the history of the north-east.

The fieldwork in the Don is now nearing completion and the preparation of the book describing the results of the survey is well under way. For me, returning to Aberdeenshire after so many years has been a rewarding experience, running well beyond the results of the survey. The warmth of the people and the sound of their voices have made me feel very much at home.

But for all that, I now realise how we tend to take so much of our surroundings for granted, particularly as children. The silhouette of Bennachie may be firmly etched in my memory, yet I never climbed the mountain as a child, and never saw the massive fort that crowns its Mither Tap. Becoming an archaeologist has given me a different perspective on the landscape and taken me to places that some people rarely see. I have come to appreciate how the past is all around us, its history often written in little more than piles of stone.

The NMRS is accessible to the public and visitors are most welcome in our library, which is open from 9.30am to 4.30pm each weekday at John Sinclair House, 16 Bernard Terrace, Edinburgh. If it is not convenient to visit in person, the NMRS can be contacted by telephone (0131 662 1456), fax (0131 662 1477) and email.
The electronic database can be consulted on the Internet
A local Sites and Monuments Record is held by Aberdeenshire Council at Woodhill House, Westburn Road, Aberdeen and can be consulted by making an appointment, telephone 01224 664726.
Enquiries can also be made on the Internet

Angela Gannon (nee Wardell) is an archaeological field investigator with the RCAHM Scotland. Educated at Banff Academy, she returned to her home-town of Edinburgh to attend university. She is married with two sons.

This is an article from the October 2001 edition of Leopard Magazine. To read much more like this every month, subscribe to Leopard Magazine.