Hindsight, we are told, is a wonderful thing. In many ways, it is. But in some ways, it can hinder our view of the world.

Over the past few years, I have been part of a team researching the changing landscape of Orkney, in particular in relation to change that is driven by the rising relative sea-levels around the islands throughout the Early Holocene. In addition to the physical changes in the world around the early communities of Orkney, I am interested in the mental challenges for the people themselves. How did people make sense of the dynamic world in which they found themselves?

It has gradually become apparent to me that our interpretation of the impact of this change on those who made Orkney their home is greatly influenced by our own experience of climate change today. Of course, this is hardly surprising. We filter everything we do and think through the mesh of familiarity. But, the people of the past did not have the benefit (or limitations) of our understanding. If we only see the past through this light, then we can never begin to approach an idea of how they might have experienced life. We have to try to push ourselves out of it.

We have been lucky enough to experience a world that has been, very generally, pretty stable for the last few centuries. Relative sea-level, in Western Europe and the Northern Hemisphere, has not changed greatly. My world view sees the physical shape of the land as, more or less, naturally immutable. Over time, I have learnt how this is not the case: that mountains grow and erode, rivers wander, coastlines recede or approach – but I do not expect to experience alteration at a personal level, and I do not have the sort of connection with previous generations that affords me a collective memory of this sort of dynamism. Others might.

My lifestyle also lacks flexibility. I depend on the infrastructure of tarmacadam and rail for travel, I require a house with stone or concrete foundations, my food is gathered from all corners of the world into a massive structural depot, without a constant supply of energy carefully generated and distributed it all starts to fall apart.

The idea of change to the fabric of the world is, to me, very threatening.

But things were not so for the earliest prehistoric communities to live in Orkney, Scotland, the British Isles. Change was, for them, part of life. Many experienced a degree of sea-level change that would have been, though not visible from year to year, at least memorable from generation to generation. Some might have known stories of times of unusual cold, or heat and drought. Others might have heard of great herds of animals that no longer roamed the countryside they knew and loved. The dynamic nature of the world was, for them, normal.

It was the way things were.

In relation to sea-level rise, in particular, I find this fascinating.

Those who experienced the gradually rising relative sea-levels of the Early Holocene had no idea that sea-level rise would end. That is our privilege. For them, sea-level rise was normal. Dry land decreased; water increased. It was the way of the world. How did they build that into their view of life?

Did they feel threatened? They were, certainly, more flexible and adaptable than us. Population levels were low. Did they rely on the fact that they had always been here and could move to new locations as conditions worsened. Was this part of their place in the world, part of their relationship with nature? We seem to find ourselves too frequently in opposition to nature these days: it was not always so in the past. Did they accept a degree of fatality that individual peoples might change or even disappear? Did they experience uncertainty, perhaps even anger, and articulate it into a relationship with deities or a spiritual realm as they tried to ensure the continued existence of future generations?

We will never know. And, of course, over time, different communities in different times and places will have mediated their way through the uncertainties of the world in many different ways.

What we can do is try to strip away our own relationship with the world of today and build on a framework of past particulars in order to develop our ideas of these particular aspects of the lives of those who came before. Hindsight, in this case, does not help.

We are slowly becoming accustomed to the idea that the world experienced by our ancestors was very different to our own, even within the span of a few millennia. Nowhere is that made clearer than when standing among the remains of a long-dead forest, especially when it lies in a landscape devoid of trees.

Many of the clues to the landscape and environment of the past are well hidden and require specialist equipment and skills to reveal and interpret them. The species and significance of a pollen grain, for example, or the patterning of mineral deposition within a soil core. These are things that would pass me by, did I not have colleagues enthusiastic enough to study them and patient enough to take the time to make sure that I understand them. But, to trip over a tree stump from the past – now, that is a different matter altogether.

One of the best places to experience preserved ancient forests is in the intertidal zone. But it is an appreciation that I have only gained in recent years. As a child, I guess I was focused on the sandcastle and rockpool potential of a beach; as a young adult, I saw them as places of beauty – good for a long walk and exercise. Now, my fascination has shifted again. I’ve been lucky enough to experience the forests of the sea in a few places now and they never cease to amaze me.

Others came to this understanding long before I. In 1913 a little book entitled Submerged Forests was published by Clement Reid, a geologist who had been collecting information as part of his work on British harbours. It is a brilliant exposition of material from around the shore. Reid appreciated that the tree remains he saw indicated that the UK had once been very different and his book includes the first published reconstruction of Doggerland, the conjoining of Britain to the continent. But Reid was not the first. Nineteenth century publications include the work of Watt and Traill Dennison in Orkney, and as far back as the twelfth century a chronicler named Gerald of Wales was commenting on the discovery of submerged tree trunks.

Nevertheless, my own journey to enlightenment has been fun. And it is an ongoing process. I do not think I will ever lose my sense of wonder at wandering among the remains of trees that were last experienced as living beings by the archaeological communities I study. Occasionally they are truly spectacular, in 2018 I was privileged to visit the submerged forests of the Minas Basin, far out in the intertidal zone at Grand Pre, in Nova Scotia. The trunks here were truly spectacular and lay a considerable distance from the shore. It was, in the original sense of the word, awesome. At home in Orkney the trunks are considerably smaller than that, but fascinating nonetheless. In the Western Isles of Scotland, the tree remains, though also smaller, bear surprising contrast to the treeless aspect of the current landscape. I’ve not visited the much-photographed trees at Borth in Wales, but they are on my wish list, and there are many others.

Of course, in some places submerged forests are associated with archaeological remains such as stone tools and this is very exciting, but, for now, I want to focus on the trees themselves. On what they mean. All bear witness to a time when relative sea-level was lower so that the landmasses of our ancestors were bigger, and trees and woodland were more common, indicators of vegetation and climatic differences to today. Past worlds were different. Of course, where they have been dated, the periods at which these woodlands flourished vary. Some date back as much as six thousand years or more, while others are more recent, a mere three or four thousand years old. We are so used to approaching the past as somewhat sterile, that the opportunity the trees provide to experience the tangible nature of the ancient world around us is, for me, an emotional one. It really brings home the type, and extent, of change that has taken place.

If you have not tried it, I would encourage you to go down to the woods today. There are opportunities around the world. All you need is a good pair of wellies. And it is good for the soul.

The submerged landscape touches us all, wherever we work. We need to bring a basic understanding of the original lie of the land to our site analyses. However, therein lies a problem. In many places, current understanding of the past position of the coast relies on the application of broadscale models drawn up for general areas such as the North Sea basin. These models are useful, but they are low resolution and cannot provide the level of detail necessary to examine the locale or behaviour of a specific human community. Yet despite the relative simplicity of obtaining the data necessary to build at least a basic idea of the change at any particular location many reports publish speculative maps that lack information.

While the recognition of past landscape change that these entail is clearly ‘a good thing’, the actual value of such reports is limited. They can give us an idea of ‘what might have happened’, but they cannot tell us much about ‘what is likely to have happened’. Without data it is impossible to outline the likely position of the coast at any one time, the processes and rates of landscape change that impacted on a community, or the precise relationships between people and their environment.

The nature of archaeology has changed to embrace such a wide range of specializations. Once upon a time it was not uncommon to undertake an excavation with little palaeoenvironmental analysis. Now, most excavation reports have sections to cover palynology and a whole series of geoscience techniques that help us to understand the formation of the site and its position in the surrounding landscape. Where this landscape extends to the underwater world the techniques are, perhaps, even more specialized, but no less essential. These, hopefully, will be the next elements to be added to the box of tricks that we all like to draw upon.

We have absorbed so much into our profession. We analyze skeletal material for isotope evidence that can help to elucidate diet and origin, we take readings of hearth material for dating purposes, we scan soil samples for elements that help to indicate periods of wet or dry climate. It is fascinating to watch a technique move from ‘amazing’ potential, to essential undertaking. Hopefully, over the coming years we will begin to understand the limitations of modelling and make sure that we always make use of geoscience data collected at an appropriate scale for our research questions. When we are dealing with an individual site or community we need to think about the relevant landscape. This can add to the expense, yes, but surely we all have a duty to do our best by the sites that we are, after all, destroying, in our quest for information.

Wickham-Jones, C. R., Bates, R., Dawson, S., Dawson, A. and Bates, M. 2018. The Changing Landscape of Prehistoric Orkney. In Persson, P., Reide, F., Skar, B., Breivik, H. M. and Jonsson, L. (eds.) The Ecology of Early Settlement in Northern Europe. Sheffield: Equinox Publishing, 393 – 414.

Wherever I turn just now I seem to be collecting examples of the way in which stories, once considered mere fairy tales and myths, may contain an element of description of the past. In some ways, it seems obvious. We use narrative to explain the world around us – today we have several names for these narratives: ‘text books’; ‘academic papers’; ‘theses’, among others. For a long time, we have accepted that there is a second form of narrative, today we call it ‘fiction’, and we regard it very differently; more specifically we assign some of it to a category that encompasses nothing more than imaginative leisure. Fairy tales; mythology; legend: call it what you will, this type of story needs no rooting in reality. In this way, we consider it different to the world of novelistic fiction that we all read for relaxation. Novels are, usually, bounded by the rules of the world; when they are not we assign them special status: science fiction, magic realism and so on. Even these names, however, hint at the way in which it is hard for the writers to move beyond the world they know and love.

Fairy tales are often different. Strange things happen and it can be hard to identify with the settings, actions, and motives of the protagonists. It is sometimes difficult to imagine the minds that conjured up such outlandish ideas. One thing we are usually agreed upon is that these stories are old. They have been around, apparently, since the mists of time and, no doubt, their weirdness is due in part to the way they have been embellished with telling. How many parents have hushed their children with a bedtime fable, or admonished them with an awful story?

And yet, perhaps we should not be surprised that research around the world is identifying increasing examples where the apparently bizarre domain of an ancient story conceals an element of description that seems to be rooted in reality. These stories often relate to a time when the world was a little different, they often tell us about changes that took place in the landscape. They are being collected from Australia to the Americas and locations in between. In Africa and India there are accounts of the submergence beneath the waves of ancient temples and cities. In Atlantic Canada the Mi’kmaq tell of the tensions between Glooscap (a local hero), Beaver, and Whale which led to the breaching of the inner bay of the Minas Basin and infiltration of the tides from the Bay of Fundy. There are many stories from the coastal peoples of Australia, some surprisingly similar: the Aboriginal inhabitants of the Wellesley Islands recount that you could walk out to their island home before the inundation of the sea which was due to the actions of Garnguur, ‘the seagull woman’.

Nearer to home, the land of Cantre’r Gwaelod is said to have extended westwards from the present coastlands of Wales, in the area of Cardigan Bay, and many stories and poems tell of its loss. In my home archipelago of Orkney, the Bay of Otterswick in the island of Sanday was reputedly once home to a great forest, a fact recently confirmed by fieldwork which uncovered the remains of trees subsequently dated to c. 6,500 years ago.

These stories fascinate me because they were originally recounted by people for whom the configuration of the world was truly different. In many cases, it seems they saw strange and scary events and needed to explain them. The tales give voice to the people of the past in a way that archaeology is only just beginning to understand. Of course they have changed in the telling: often exaggerated, bent, augmented and tweaked, we can’t use them as a direct retelling of the past. But, the ultimate irony of archaeology is that, while we seek to learn about people, we have to achieve it through the study of inanimate objects. People, the essence of humanity, lie a long way from the sherds of pottery, stone flakes and soil discolorations that we enthuse over. And yet, strangely, in the current application of geoscience research to the investigation of oral histories, a small sense of the colour and depth of life in the past is beginning to break through.

New Paper out on the development of the landscape around Ness of Brodgar.

Wickham-Jones, C.R., Bates, M., Bates, R., Dawson, S. and Kavanagh, E. 2016 People and Landscape at the Heart of Neolithic Orkney. Archaeological Review from Cambridge, 31 (2), 26-47.

Together with my colleagues, I’ve been working on a paper to discuss the results of our work on landscape change around the Ness of Brodgar, particularly relating to the Loch of Stenness. We published the tekky detail this time last year, and we were keen to explore what it might mean with relation to the Neolithic communities of the area and the siting of the monuments that make up the Heart of Neolithic Orkney. You really have to read the paper to get the full detail, but in essence our landscape reconstructions document the penetration of marine conditions into the dry land world of the Neolithic farmers at the heart of the islands. Given the emerging evidence for the ‘slighting of the sea’ in the Early Neolithic, it is fascinating that this fragile spot became so important to the island community.

It is possible to order a copy of the Landscape issue of Archaeological Review from Cambridge here. But I can let people have a pdf of our paper for individual research interests – just email me (my email address is on the home page).