26. ‘Past the Shieling, through the Town: Settlement, Subsistence and the Shieling Landscape in Early Modern Glencoe’.

by Edward Stewart

Synopsis

In this presentation the results of recent archaeological fieldwork in Gleann Leac-na-Muidhe, Glencoe will be discussed, exploring the busyness of these uplands in the early modern period, and their role within systems of subsistence, industry and in the negotiation of power among local elites. Drawing upon walkover survey, placename evidence and historic maps, the management of pasturage, woodlands and game will be considered within the Glencoe uplands, while drawing on excavations of shieling huts and related structures the relationships between settlement and shieling will be explored. Building wider connections not just within the Glencoe landscape but beyond to the wider Highlands, Lowland Scotland, England, Ireland and Continental Europe, the results of recent excavations at a chiefly hunting residence, the ‘Summerhouse of MacIain’ will be interrogated to consider the importance of these uplands, often viewed as marginal, in the period.

Image caption: A site tour for UofG PGR students and visiting researchers to excavations at a shieling and whisky bothy site in 2022 in Gleann Leac-na-Muidhe). Image credit: Gemma Smith

About the speaker

Edward Stewart is a PhD researcher at the University of Glasgow, investigating narratives around shieling landscapes in early modern Scotland with an aim to challenging tired notions of upland marginality, liminality and emptiness, which when applied to the contemporary Highland landscape can have the effect or marginalising their communities in the present, justifying revanchist land improvements such as rewilding.
Edward is the excavations director of the University of Glasgow’s Glencoe field school, and has excavated both early modern, medieval, Roman and Prehistoric sites in Scotland, Italy and Cyprus, and directed topographic surveys in each of these countries.

How to participate

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