Continuity and stability in past upland land uses in the western Cheviot Hills, southern Scotland

ABSTRACT

Upland areas of the British Isles have frequently been seen as vulnerable to environmental stress, and because of this climatic and economic marginality, to have been colonised, abandoned and recolonised rather than to have endured and adapted. This paper presents ¹⁴C (radiocarbon)-dated palaeoecological data, supported by archaeological evidence, providing a continuous record of vegetation, settlement and land use in one upland landscape high in the western Cheviot Hills, on the Anglo-Scottish border, over the last 2,000 years. The data show that grassland has dominated this landscape without change from the Romano-British period. Adaptive elements like cereal cultivation were added but then withdrawn on two occasions during this period, but without deflecting from the primary purpose of agricultural activity, which was and remains, stock raising. Reasons for the early historic establishment of intensive pastoral activity may include late Roman economic stability, but irrespective of the engine for this single change, the data show, when compared with nearby settings in the same range of hills, how divergent individual landscape histories have been.

KEYWORDS:

• Cheviot Hills
• historic landscapes
• palynology and vegetation change
• pastoralism