Disrupting the heritage of place: practising counter-archaeologies at Dumby, Scotland

ABSTRACT

The notion of counter-archaeology is echoed by the opposing faces of the volcanic plug of Dumbarton Rock, Scotland. On the one side is the ‘official’ heritage of Dumbarton Castle, with its upstanding seventeenth-century military remains and underlying occupation evidence dating back to at least the eighth century ad. On the other side lies a landscape of climbing, bouldering and post-industrial abandonment. This paper develops counter-archaeology through the climbing traditions and boulder problems at Dumbarton Rock and brings to the surface marginalized forms of heritage. Climbers and archaeologists have co-authored the paper as part of a collaborative project, which challenges the binary trope of researcher and researched and provides a model for a collaborative, co-designed and co-produced counter-archaeology.

KEYWORDS:

• Dumbarton Rock
• climbing
• 3D
• collaboration
• ACCORD
• archaeology

Acknowledgements

Thanks to all the ACCORD project partners. Thanks to Historic Environment Scotland for providing the Governor’s House at Dumbarton Castle and for access to the Statement of Significance for Dumbarton Castle. The authors would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council under Grant [AH/L007533/1].

Notes on contributors

Alex Hale

Alex Hale is an archaeologist who worked at the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, which is now Historic Environment Scotland, where he works on collaborative research projects, landscape surveys and Scotland’s contemporary and historic graffiti art.

Alison Fisher

Alison Fisher studied at Glasgow School of Art, is a climber and rope access specialist.

John Hutchinson

John Hutchinson is a climber and PhD candidate in cultural geography. His research is centred on landscape and heritage in Scotland: http://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/ges/pgresearch/johnhutchinson/

Stuart Jeffrey

Stuart Jeffrey is a Research Fellow at Glasgow School of Art who focuses on visualization and heritage.

Sian Jones

Sian Jones is Professor of Environmental History and Heritage at the University of Stirling. She conducts interdisciplinary research on heritage, identity, memory, conservation, authenticity and social value.

Mhairi Maxwell

Mhairi Maxwell is an archaeologist who worked on community heritage projects at the Glasgow School of Art, Digital Design Studio and now works with the V&A Museum of Design Dundee Learning and Innovation Team.

John Stewart Watson

John Stewart Watson is a climber, writer and publisher of guidebooks to the outdoors.