Transhumance and its environmental context

This work package will provide evidence for activities carried out at shielings and interrogate the dynamics between environmental conditions, shieling sites and the people who used them. In WP 3 we will pair the historical, spatial (GIS) and chronological data from WP1 and WP2 with paleoenvironmental and geoarchaeological data. The paleoenvironmental data will include: (1) high resolution (subcentennial) pollen and fungal spore analyses of lake sediment and/or wetland profiles from three sites in each of the two study areas to investigate environmental change and land use at selected shielings; (2) insect-analyses of bulk samples from selected excavated contexts, for activity-proxies associated wool production, hay storage (or lack thereof) and human occupation; (3) soil micromorphology, which will be transformed into high resolution thin sections that can reveal glimpses into human activities and environmental processes that took place at selected shielings during their lifetime: eg floor formation, fuel use, animal presence, building seasonality and the nature of abandonment.

The focus of WP3 is designed to tackle specific activities, site use history, as well as their environmental context and contemporary resource base. The results of WP3 will be strengthened through comparison with historical and spatial data.