Sites are key to the work of an archaeologist. But what, exactly, do we mean by a site? It is a term that we use all of the time, but it has become so commonplace that we rarely stop to consider what we are talking about. It is worthwhile pausing and reflecting.

It is a complicated situation from the start. When an archaeologist talks about a site, they might mean one of two things:

• A location of interest in the present day – a place where archaeological material occurs, and which has the potential for visiting and, possibly, investigation.
• A location of interest in the past – a place where people did things.

I’ve covered the latter definition and the problems we encounter when trying to weigh up the relative significance of locations in previous blog entries. But I have also been thinking about the former in relation to the project I’m working on just now. And, the two blur together.

The issues relate to a fieldwalking project in farmland outside Aberdeen. The location of all the individual finds has to be recorded and the easiest way to do this is, of course, with a dGPS, but we also need a shorthand way in which to know how different groups of finds might relate to other groups. The most obvious method is to relate the finds to the fields in which they have been picked up. This tried and tested method has been used successfully for over a century; fields have names and you will find that most fieldwalking projects use them to refer to individual ‘sites’.

It works. Or does it?

There are some problems.

Field boundaries are not static and when a project takes place over a number of years some of these boundaries, inevitably, change. Fields often become bigger: two ‘sites’ may be amalgamated into one. On occasion they are subdivided: one ‘site’ may become two. In addition, it is not uncommon to walk one field and then, perhaps a few years later when the adjacent field is ploughed, that might be walked as well. If two similar assemblages are found in the adjoining fields, does that mean that there are two sites? Or is it really one site? The boundaries of today are, after all, modern constructs that have no relation to the communities of prehistory.

The nomenclature can become difficult and it only gets more complex as, with time, more and more of the countryside is covered. Gradually, a nice mosaic of individual field ‘sites’ will blur into a broader spread with varying lithic densities and contents across the land. At this point, careful record keeping, while tricky, becomes vital. We need to know where the evidence has been found, but the analysis has to expunge the modern boundaries if it is to provide a valid interpretation of the past.

As you see, our instinctive use of the word site is laden with issues. I’m not sure at this stage that we can resolve them. It is too deeply embedded into the archaeological consciousness for us to change our conversation and use terms like research locus, or activity spot – and both of those sound horribly jargonistic and pedantic. But I do think it is useful to be careful that we say what we mean to say. We need to be clear. What are we talking about when we say ‘site’?

• Do we mean the individual field?
• Do we mean the geographic focus of our research?
• Do we mean the general farm or community where the finds have been made?
• Do we mean the spot where people did something in prehistory?

It is no bad thing to remind ourselves that the names we give are always modern and relate more to our own use of the land than use in the past. It is no bad thing to remind ourselves that we need to be clear about what we mean. And it is certainly no bad thing to remind ourselves of the importance of accurate and comprehensive record keeping.

In this way it is possible to build a picture of the ways in which people have used the landscape of the past and, if you are lucky, to visualise this behind the landscape that meets the eye today.

Lithic scatters are one of the most common archaeological sites relating to Prehistory. What are they, how to investigate them, how to manage them? All is revealed in this new guidance document written with Scotland in mind. Thanks to the many people who consulted on this and helped with information and images. Although the document was written for those working on Scottish material, hopefully it contains information that will be of interest to those elsewhere.

It is free to download from the ALGAO website

We have all had a strange summer this 2020. Dreams of fieldwork as we wander the lanes around our homes and peer into fields wondering what we might find there were the farmer to plough the land. With this in mind I was asked to write a wee guide to the joys of fieldwalking for Dig it Scotland. You can read it here.

I’ve been thinking about the significance of archaeological sites in connection with a project I’m working on just now. I’m concerned in particular with lithic scatter sites: fields, or other areas, where a spread of worked stone is visible on the surface of the ground.

Some lithic scatter sites have many thousands of pieces of worked stone (usually, but not always, flint), but others may have only a few hundred, or even a handful. Some sites cover a wide area, some are smaller, some more concentrated. By classifying the types of worked stone found it is possible to get an idea of the chronological periods represented. The fashion for some things was, thankfully, different in the Mesolithic to the Neolithic and so on. Arrowheads are particularly vulnerable to fashion. The range of pieces can also provide a rough idea of activity: whether there is debris from the manufacture of tools for example, or perhaps mainly points, blades or scrapers left from the completion of some tasks. It is very rough and really, in order to understand any site better, some sort of more invasive archaeology is necessary to investigate the preservation of in situ features and other material. But often the collection and classification of a surface assemblage is the best way to obtain a basic understanding of the archaeology.

What bothers me, however, is how to assess the significance of these places? In the past we have tended to judge them by size and, where present, date. Big sites, with lots of material, would be regarded as more significant than small sites with only a few pieces. Sites with pieces that relate to earlier or less well-known periods also tend to be regarded as significant. But this is all very crude.

For starters, it is patently, only a register of the significance of a site in the present day. We are assessing the significance to modern archaeologists. Is it not, in fact, an unreliable evaluation to base the significance of a site in prehistory on the amount of debris that people left behind? By that measure the most significant places in post-war Britain would be old landfill sites. Weird (or maybe not).

Size may come into it, but it is a complex equation. Occupation sites generally contain a diversity of evidence: traces of shelters, hearths, storage, and waste. Our homes are certainly significant. But are they the most significant places in our lives? What about the wooded hillock a mile away where we know we can always be sure of bagging some game for the pot? What about the crystal-clear waterfall that leads to the burn running past our fields? It ensures life-giving fresh water throughout the year. What about the farm where we grew up, where our sister still lives with her family – we have never returned but it is always in our hearts. How about the tombs of the ancestors? The great oak where everyone congregates when we need to gather? You get my gist. One thing about our 2020 lockdown – it has changed the way we view the places on which we rely. Significance is not stable.

Some archaeologists are lucky. They have records, or even informants, to discuss the way in which the landscape worked for other communities. Opportunities like this open up new worlds, new interpretations. But they don’t exist for those of us concerned with the early Prehistory of Europe. The life of an archaeologist is devoted to interpreting other communities, but, of necessity, our first-hand experience is always limited to ourselves.

It occurs to me that we are wrong to dismiss the teeny-weeny lithic scatters as insignificant. We cannot ever know. While archaeologists focus on definable sites, the people of the past did not operate in discrete boxes; their behaviour took place across the landscape. There is, thus, a geographic gradation of detritus relating to any activity or life. Centres, known as sites, are likely to contain the highest density of detritus (in this case lithic assemblages), but it is unlikely to stop completely between centres. In order to understand human behaviour, therefore, it is important to record and investigate the less prolific areas of lithic material as well as the higher density spreads. This has long been an issue for archaeologists, and it is, of course, complicated by the geomorphological and other taphonomic processes that also impact on archaeological survival. Foley considered it, very eloquently, in 1978. Archaeology focusses on clearly defined sites with large numbers of finds, but those with fewer finds are likely to be just as interesting (and significant) in terms of ancient human behaviour. How to investigate and interpret the less clearly defined site, where a handful of lithics may be the only indication of prehistoric activity, is more of a problem, but we can, at least, record them and make a start.

Higher density sites may be significant in terms of archaeological resource and past human behaviour, but it is perhaps through examination of lower density sites that archaeological fieldwalking really comes into its own. In this way it offers a real contribution towards interpretation of the behaviour of the prehistoric communities. These are the places through which people passed: the routeways, overnight stops, hunting blinds, kill-site butchery areas, all the little everyday places that completed the web of human activity.

Without the small, and apparently insignificant, as well as the large, our archaeologies will always be incomplete.

Just a brief note of a short paper that has come out in British Archaeology magazine which some might find of interest. I’m hoping to work it into a more detailed academic publication as well.

I’ve been thinking about lithic scatters a lot recently. For the uninitiated a lithic scatter is a collection of stone tools. They tend to be found on the ground surface, usually across the surface of a ploughed field, but they may also occur in other places such as within a blowout between eroding sand dunes, in the gravels at the edge of a lake, or along a hillside footpath. Of course, the material that you pick up from the ground is only part of it, the bulk of the pieces from any lithic scatter site will lie within the soil below, whether that is ploughsoil, blown sand or whatever.

Lithic scatters are a reflection of the past presence of human groups, who left behind their debris, most of which has long dissolved away into Scotland’s acid soils. Flint (or other worked stone), being durable, survives. Sadly, the existence of a scatter site is usually testimony that the site itself has succumbed to the processes of nature and people so that in situ remains such as the traces of hut circles or hearths, have long since disappeared. In many cases the stone tools result from several episodes of human activity, often separated by long periods of time, and frequently representing different types of activity. A lithic scatter is rarely the result of a single event, though it can happen.

It may also be the case that below the disturbed upper layers of a scatter site, some material has survived in its original location. For these reasons, it is a complex business to unpick the multiple histories of a scatter site.

It is first necessary to assess the material on the ground surface: how large an area is covered; are there distinct boundaries to the site; what types of find are present? This is usually achieved by fieldwalking, crossing the field, or surface, in transects with the eyes to the ground in order to look for material such as stone flakes. These will usually be picked up, bagged, and the location recorded using a digital Global Positioning System (DGPS). Occasionally finds are left in position on the surface of the field. Fieldwalking is best done on a recently ploughed field that has been left to weather and expose the stone tools. The morning after rain is always good because the flint surface shows nice and shiny when it is wet. Some advocate intense examination on hands and knees, but most people prefer to remain upright and, with practice, it is possible to get your eyes accustomed to spotting even tiny slivers of stone.

Fieldwalking is a good technique because it does not disturb the site itself apart from the removal of material that has already been disturbed. From this analysis it should be possible to provide preliminary information relating to the likely period/s and type/s of site concerned. The next stage is to dig test pits across the field. These comprise small pits usually hand dug and measuring anything around one or two metres square. The aim of test pitting is usually to assess the material within the ploughsoil and look for any archaeological features that may survive intact below the ploughzone. To this end, all, or a sample, of the soil will be sieved in order to locate and remove finds and the surface below the ploughsoil is carefully cleaned by hand.

Where traces of the original site are found, this information can assist management of the site, and may lead to full-scale excavation.

Given the ubiquity of the agricultural landscape across Scotland, and an erosive natural landscape outside farmed areas, it is not surprising to find that scatter sites form one of the most common ways in which archaeological material is to be found. It is also relevant that for much of our past people have not been in the habit of making stone buildings or monuments so that few, if any, upstanding traces of a site will appear on the ground surface.

Nevertheless, despite their importance, scatter sites are generally neglected as an archaeological resource. To date the management powers of bodies such as Historic Environment Scotland make it difficult for scatter sites to be included in any mandatory protection scheme. Many archaeologists regard them as so disturbed and damaged that they are rarely worthy of detailed attention.

I’d like to argue for the significance of scatter sites. They provide an important indication of prehistoric sites which rarely show up on the surface of the ground. They can often mask well-preserved material below ground surface. And, investigation has shown that, with care, it is possible to extract a considerable amount of valuable information from a scatter site. Along the River Dee in Aberdeenshire, the HLF funded work of the admirable Mesolithic Deeside group has shown just how much one group of enthusiastic people can find from scatter sites. By fieldwalking and occasionally test pitting they have discovered a number of new prehistoric sites and contributed much additional detail to our understanding of existing sites.

Some of the Deeside sites have been fieldwalked over a number of years (see here). A few have now been test-pitted and one has seen a major excavation. From this it has also been possible to build an intruiging picture of the way in which archaeological information is constructed. From the initial recovery of some rather nice pieces such as arrowheads and scrapers, to later finds of small microlithic points, and the ubiquitous presence of flint cores, we can see understanding of the archaeology of these particular fields growing over the years. It is a fascinating story and one which archaeology rarely gets the opportunity to uncover.

Scatter sites are a complex archaeological resource, worthy of better attention.