4D archaeology.

4D archaeology. Introduction By far the commonest absolute date estimates come from radiocarbonages converted to dates by comparing them with the ages of tree rings ofknown date. There are still many problems with the technique. The quotederrors attached to most of the dates obtained between 1950 and around1982 have to be increased by factors between 1.4 and 4 (Baillie 1990;Ashmore et al. 2000). There are plateaux in the calibration curve In analytical chemistry, a calibration curve is a general method for determining the concentration of a substance in an unknown sample by comparing the unknown to a set of standard samples of known concentration. whichmean that some ages correspond to an unacceptably wide range of calendardates. Many archaeological sites contain pieces of charcoal much olderthan the main period of activity on them. Many charcoal dates obtainedbefore about 1999 were from bulk samples and some demonstrably reflectmixing of charcoal of very different age, providing a meaningless datesomewhere in between (Ashmore 1999a). There is now fairly abundantevidence that dates from poorly preserved bone, whether buried orcremated, can be centuries out. The marine effect, which has beenassumed to make all Scottish shell dates 405 years too old, mayfluctuate (Harkness 1983; Cook & Dugmore pers. comm.). The bones ofpeople who ate food from marine sources show the marine effect andcalculation of the required change to an age measured by a laboratorydepends on a measurement of the strength of the marine effect at thetime the person lived (Barrett et al. 2000). Some dates from residues onpots seem to represent accurately the time they formed; others forunknown reasons do not. There are only about 1670 radiocarbon ages from archaeologicalcontexts and artefacts in Scotland between about 8500 cal BC and 0 andonly about 1040 from between 0 and AD 1000, around which time historicaldates become useful (TABLE 1). Some of those obtained as recently as thepast few years are problematical in one way or another. The inadequatenumber of good dates becomes even more obvious when regionality is takeninto account. Scotland has a diverse topography and climate and thecapacity of its soils to maintain agriculture varies widely regionallyas well as locally. Its cultures undoubtedly varied also (Barclay2000b). Therefore a date for a type of structure or artefact See artifact. in one areamay not be a very useful guide to the date of a similar structure orartefact elsewhere. On the other hand, there have been some encouraging basicdevelopments over the past few years. The excellent OxCal programme hasmade manipulation of groups of dates fairly easy (Bronk Ramsey 2000).The 1998 calibration curve is of high quality back to nearly 12,000years ago and useful back to nearly 14,500 years ago (Stuiver et al.1998). The bio-apatite fraction from highly cremated bone appears toprovide consistently credible ages for a range of Irish and Scottishsamples (Lanting & Brindlay 1998). SURRC SURRC Scottish Universities Research and Reactor Centre (UK)has started a programme ofdating matched samples of marine and terrestrial material to see whetherthe marine effect did fluctuate, and if so, by how much (Gordon Cookpers. comm.) Historic Scotland Historic Scotland is an executive agency of the Scottish Executive, responsible for historic monuments in Scotland.Its website states: "Historic Scotland was created as an agency in 1991 and was attached to the Scottish Executive Education Department, which now pays only for single entityarchaeological dates (Ashmore 1999a). It prefers to obtain large numbersof dates with more than one from individual contexts, vastly improvingunderstanding of what the dates really mean. Re-dating of classic siteshas helped to resolve some long-standing arguments. Some dating issues In what follows I have space to illustrate only a few of theScottish dating issues illuminated by recent dates. I shall avoid someof the exciting developments discussed elsewhere in this Specialsection. One prominent issue of the past few years has been whether asettled way of life evolved before farming reached Scotland (Finlayson1999). The numbers of dated hunter-gatherer sites per century south ofInverness does increase sharply around 4500, reaching a peak and thendropping off dramatically at about 4200 cal BC (Ashmore forthcoming).But the evidence from the only extensive and relatively well datedregional study, Scotland's First Settlers, in Skye and the adjacentislands and mainland, does not so far show the same pattern (Cressey etal. 2000; Hardy forthcoming; Hardy & Wickham-Jones, this volume),What complicates the issue further is that there is a comparativeabsence of dated sites or artefacts of any kind between about 4250 and4000 cal BC, and there are no well-dated artefacts or structures whichcould be called typical of farmers before about 3750 cal BC, althoughthere are a very few dated structures which could have been built eitherby hunter-gatherers or by farmers. A light stake-built structure underthe Bigger Common long barrow A long barrow is a prehistoric monument dating to the early Neolithic period. They are rectangular or trapezoidal earth mounds traditionally interpreted as collective tombs. dates to the centuries around 5000 cal BCand raises intriguing questions; either a mound thought to be typical offarmers was built directly on a structure created by hunter-gatherers,implying continuity, or farmers were in Scotland almost as early as onthe facing shores of the continent (Johnston 1997: 240-43). There arealso ages associated with carinated car��i��nat��edadj.Carinate. pottery at several sites which implydates a few centuries either side of 3750 cal BC and a pair of agesimplying dates around 4000 cal BC from Bigger Common (Burl 1984;McCullagh 1989; Sheridan 1993; Shepherd 1996: 22; Sheridan 1997: 202-7).Unfortunately the Biggar ages applicable to the pottery are from samplesof mixed charcoal from a bonfire on a site with earlier charred material(HS sample submission sheet), and like all ages from mixed samples mustbe regarded with considerable caution (Ashmore 1999). It does at the moment seem more likely that farmers brought farmingto Scotland than that hunter-gatherer populations settled down to adoptagriculture through contact with continental, Irish or English farmers.The likely window for the end of a complete reliance on hunting, fishingand gathering has narrowed from between 4500 and 3750 cal BC to between4250 and 3750 cal BC. Other boundaries have blurred; for instance,bevel-ended tools, once thought to be characteristic of early gatherers,continued to be used until about 2000 cal BC (Ashmore forthcoming). Tothe nearest quarter-millennium, however, 4000 cal BC remains the bestround estimate for fairly widespread farming in at least some parts ofScotland. Another dating debate relates to what may seem at first sight amuch more parochial issue. The disagreement is about whether Unstan Waresites in Orkney were in general earlier or largely contemporary withthose with Grooved Ware Grooved ware is the name given to a pottery style of the British Neolithic. Its manufacturers are sometimes known as the Grooved ware people.Early in the 3rd millennium BC, Grooved ware began to appear all over the British Isles. . It has gained prominence because the evidencehas been used to suggest social changes between 3500 and 3000 cal BCwith wide implications for other parts of Britain (Renfrew 2000). It iscomplicated by a plateau in the calibration curve which makes itdifficult to distinguish between dates between about 3400 and 3100 calBC (Ashmore 2000). Recent re-dating of the classic Unstan Waresettlement at Knap of Howar At Knap of Howar on the Orkney island of Papa Westray, a Neolithic farmstead has been wonderfully well preserved, and is claimed to be the oldest preserved stone house in northern Europe, with radiocarbon dating showing that it was occupied from 3500 BC to 3100 BC, earlier than the suggests that it was constructed about 3500cal BC and continued in use until some time between 3400 and 3100 cal BC(A. Ritchie 2000), The ditch-fill of the Grooved Ware site of the Stonesof Stenness started to accumulate between about 3300 and 2900 cal BC(J.N.G. Ritchie 2001). It is now more likely than it seemed previouslythat the two pottery styles were largely sequential rather than largelycontemporary. That said, there was always a certain artificiality aboutthis argument because it was based on so few sites. The recentexcavation of a group of houses with Unstan Ware and another house withGrooved Ware between Finstown and Kirkwall in Orkney (Downes &Richards 2000) promises to provide more data and possibly to blur thesharp distinctions drawn in the past. Recent popular accounts of the period (Parker Pearson 1993; Ashmore1996) have hinted that Grooved Ware may have been developed in Orkney.The new dates for Stenness suggest that the ditch fill started toaccumulate between about 3100 and 2900 cal BC. The nearby settlement atBarnhouse has a very similar date range. At Callanish in the WesternIsles Western Islesor Western Islands,Scotland: see Hebrides, the. , the stone ring and later chambered cairn cairn,pile of stones, usually conical in shape, raised as a landmark or a memorial. In prehistoric times it was usually erected over a burial. A barrow is sometimes called a cairn. date to between 2900 and2600 cal BC (Ashmore 1999b). It has long been assumed that the Stennessstone ring and that at Callanish might be broadly of the same date,since both are built of exceptionally tall stones and Grooved Wareoccurs at both sites. However, it now seems likely that there was asignificant difference in date between them, perhaps severalgenerations, and the idea that new social structures and the building ofrings of stone spread very swiftly through most of Britain about 3000cal BC requires re-examination. The spread may have been measured ingenerations, perhaps mediated by existing regional differences. Twofairly recent sets of dates for Grooved Ware, from Littleour inPerthshire (Barclay 2000a: 125-6; Barclay & Maxwell 1998: 59, 67)and Auchlishie in Angus (Dick 2001: 9) suggest that it was still in useafter about 2400 cal BC. Since the work of Barber on Arran in the 1970s, it has becomeincreasingly clear that landscapes of considerable chronological depthsurvive in Scotland, albeit fragmented (Barber 1997). One of theircommonest elements, roundhouses, were being built in Scotland around1800 cal BC and perhaps earlier (Ashmore 2002). Indeed, a piece ofcharcoal from a ring groove on Platform 8 at Lintshie Gutter has a datebetween 2580 and 2200 cal BC, although it may be from old wood: it has asomewhat anomalous peat-like [delta][.sup.13]C value of -29.9 (Terry1995). The origins of this form of house are not clear. Somefree-standing houses with Grooved Ware and early dates are externallyoval, for instance at Barnhouse, Orkney (Richards 1993), and there areoval houses with Beaker at, for instance, Tormore, Arran (Barber 1997)and Cowie, Stirling (Atkinson forthcoming), but there is little to fillthe gap between them and the earliest houses at Lintshie Gutter andAchany Glen, Lairg (McCullagh & Tipping 1998). Much more excavationis required on sites with round houses, and it seems possible that theearly Lintshie Gutter date will prove not to be as anomalous as Icurrently suspect. Problems associated with attempts to date poorly preserved bonehave been encountered during another exciting development of the pastdecade: the wide-spread dating of unaccompanied un��ac��com��pa��nied?adj.1. Going or acting without companions or a companion: unaccompanied children on a flight.2. Music Performed or scored without accompaniment. human burials inisolated cists, small cemeteries of square and round barrows and cairnsand in long cist cemeteries. Small cemeteries of the first few centuriescal BC and AD have long been known (Hill 1982; Dalland 1992; Greig etal. 2002). Isolated cist burials and long graves have been dated toslightly later. But the new dates allow a new story to be told. In thewest the three earliest dated cist burials from a cemetery at Galson,Lewis date to before the mid 3rd century AD (Neighbour 2001). In theeast it seems that long cist cemeteries may have origins as early as the3rd or early 4th century AD (Greig et al. 2000). Round and square barrowcemeteries may be as early as the 4th or early 5th century AD (Alexander1999; 2001). At the moment, and despite parallels with platform cairnsin north Wales North Wales (known in some archaic texts as Northgalis) is the northernmost unofficial region of Wales, bordered to the south by Mid Wales and to the east by England. , the low barrows and cairns covering cist burials seem tobe an indigenous Scottish development, perhaps stimulated by Romandevelopments further south. Introduction of single entity dating and multiple dates fromcontexts together with redating of classic sites and new techniques suchas bio-apatite dating are expensive. But they are bringing many strandsof a long and complicated story into a better focus as many morehigh-quality dates become available (Ashmore et al. 2001). Although theywill take some time to absorb, particularly since models oflong-distance connections have recently become more sophisticated(Sheridan 2000; Ashmore forthcoming), it is indeed a most stimulatingtime for Scottish archaeology as it takes on a truly four-dimensionalshape.TABLE 1. approximate approximate number of number of archaeological archaeological [sup.14]C ages [sup.14]C ages from per 25-yearperiod Scotland generation8500-4000 cal BC 240 14000-3000 cal BC 280 73000-2000 cal BC 250 62000-1000 cal BC 500 12.51000-0 cal BC 400 10cal AD 0-1000 1040 26cal AD 1000-2000 350 9 References ALEXANDER, D. 1999. Red Castle, Lunan Bay, Angus, Discovery andExcavation in Scotland 1999:111. 2001. Red Castle, Lunan Bay, Angus, Discovery and Excavation inScotland n.s. 2: 122-3. ASHMORE, P.J. 1996. Neolithic and Bronze Age Bronze Age,period in the development of technology when metals were first used regularly in the manufacture of tools and weapons. 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Biggar Common, 1987-1993: an early prehistoricfunerary fu��ner��ar��y?adj.Of or suitable for a funeral or burial.[Latin fner and domestic landscape in Clydesdale, South Lanarkshire South Lanarkshire (Siorrachd Lannraig a Deas in Gaelic)m is one of 32 unitary council regions in Scotland, covering the southern part of the traditional county of Lanarkshire. ,Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 127: 185-253. LAMBECK, K. 1995, Late Devensian and Holocene shorelines of theBritish Isles British Isles:see Great Britain; Ireland. and North Sea from models of glaciohydro-isostaticrebound, Journal of the Geological Society 152: 437-48. LANTING, J.N. & A.L. BRINDLEY, 1998. Dating cremated bone: thedawn of a new era, Journal of Irish Archaeology 9: 1-7. MCCULLAGH, R.P.J. 1989. Excavations at Newton, Islay, GlasgowArchaeological Journal 15: 23-52. McCuLLAGH, R.P.J.& R. TIPPING (ed.) 1998. 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PATRICK ASHMORE, Historic Scotland, Longmore House, SalisburyPlace, Edinburgh EH9 1SH, Scotland. patrick.ashmore@scotland.gsi.gov.uk