No Stone Unturned: A History of Farming, Landscape and Environment in the Scottish Highlands and Islands - Hardcover

Robert A Dodgshon

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1474400744 ISBN 13: 9781474400749

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press, 2015

Synopsis

This is a survey of how Highland society organised its farming communities, exploited its resource base and interacted with its environment from prehistory to 1914. There has long been a view that the farming communities to be found in the Highlands prior to the Clearances were archaic forms. The way in which they were organised, the way in which they farmed the land and the technologies which they employed were all seen as taking shape during prehistory and then surviving relatively unchanged. Such a view first emerged first during the late 19th century and found repeated expression through a number of studies thereafter. However, its entrenchment in the literature was despite the fact that many ongoing studies have highlighted aspects of how the region changed from prehistory onwards. This study confronts this conflict over the question of continuity/discontinuity debate through an analysis of the cultural landscape. Starting with prehistory, it examines the way in which the farming community was organised: its institutional basis, its strategies of resource use and how these impacted on landscape, and the way in which it interacted with the challenges of its environment. It carries these themes forward through the medieval and early modern periods, rounding off the discussion with a substantive review of the gradual spread of commercial sheep farming and the emergence of the crofting townships over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Throughout, it draws out what changed and what was carried forward from each period so that we have a better understanding of the region's dynamic history, as opposed to the ahistorical views that inevitably flow from a stress on cultural inertia. It provides a one stop text for the long term history of the Highland countryside. It synthesises a great deal of work on the Highland farming community during the medieval and early modern periods in terms of its institutional organisation, resource exploitation, landscape impacts and interactions with environment. It introduces new ideas and arguments that have not been treated or previewed in other published work. It provides the most substantive review of the continuity/discontinuity debate in the Highland landscape currently available.

About this title

About the Author

Robert A. Dodgshon was formerly Gregynog Professor of Geography and Director of the Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences at Aberystwyth University.

From the Back Cover

'This is a scholarly tour de force, informed by a lifetime of original research and critical reading. The notion of a traditional Highland agrarian system surviving unchanged from the Iron Age until the eighteenth century is simply blown out of the water' Chris Smout, Institute for Environmental History, University of St Andrews A survey of how Highland society organised its farming from prehistory to 1914 It has long been assumed that the farming communities present in the Highlands prior to the Clearances were old established. For some, the way they farmed the land and the technologies which they employed took shape during prehistory and then survived unchanged. This study confronts this debate over whether what we see prior to the Clearances was the outcome of a longstanding continuity or whether we should allow for greater ongoing change. It does so by exploring the nature of the farming community and its strategies of resource use, and how these impacted on landscape and the environment. It starts with a review of farming in prehistory and carries its main themes forward through the medieval and early modern periods, rounding off the discussion with a review of the Clearances and the emergence of crofting townships over the 18th and 19th centuries, highlighting the moments of discontinuity in the making of the Highland cultural landscape. Robert A. Dodgshon is Emeritus Professor of Human Geography, Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences, Aberystwyth University. His previous books include Land and Society in Early Scotland (1981), From Chiefs to Landlords: Social and Economic Change in the Western Highlands and Islands, c.1493-1820 (1998) and The Age of the Clans (2002).

Edition details

• Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1474400744
• ISBN 13: 9781474400749
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 304