While others were perfecting their sourdough recipes, or embroidering replicas of the Bayeux Tapestry, I was working with the members of Mesolithic Deeside and various associated archaeologists to produce a publication of the first three years of work of the group. The final words might be mine – but the hard work was undertaken by many others. I had a wealth of reports and field notes, all supplied by the team, from which to hone our document. There were also extensive photographs, maps and drawings – all put together through the talent of others.

Did we succeed in producing an informative but readable account? Download it from the link here and judge for yourself. I think it is a fascinating story, but then I am biased.

The other thing to note here is all the help and expertise we have received from others. From the National Lottery Heritage Fund who provided the funding that got the group going, to Aberdeenshire Council Archaeology Service who were always there with support and advice, and Historic Environment Scotland who have supported the final publication, as well as many, many other funding bodies along the way. Then there was the fantastic team at the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland who edited and published the final report as part of their wonderful Scottish Archaeological Internet Reports series (wonderful not just for the content but also because it is freely available – not a paywall in sight). And so many people along the way. Community archaeology is a brilliant evocation of the variety of skills that can be brought to bear on unravelling the past when people care.

I won’t say that there were not moments when I woke up in the middle of the night and despaired at the size of the task I had taken on. But for me the end result justifies those odd moments of reflection (and I do love writing).

The work of Mesolithic Deeside continues. No matter how much we know about the work of the past, there is always more to learn. If you want to join in, get in touch with them. It is fun – and healthy! And hopefully there will be more volumes like this one: the finds, and sites, since 2019 are already beginning to mount up!

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

Just occasionally other people make use of my work. This week there are two such publications.Landscapes Revealed, now published by Oxbow Books, details the results of geophysical survey around the Heart of Neolithic Orkney World Heritage Site. It has been a mammoth effort, incorporating nearly 20 yeasrs of work from first inception to publication, but the result is well worthwhile. Not only do you have a listing of all the sites recorded (and this is a full landscape), but you also have a detailed discussion of the changing patterns of human activity across the area set into the wider Orkney context. It makes for a fascinating read.

Sadly the decision was taken not to annotate individual contributions other than in the acknowledgements, but you will find two sections that detail the results of the research undertaken by myself and my colleagues around Skara Brae (pp 61-65) and on the submerged landscape of the Loch of Stenness (pp 216-220).

The second ‘publication’ takes me further back. In 1988 I was lucky enough to journey through Pakistan and China. In common with other academics I took many photographs – all on slide film. In recent years I have been worrying about the deterioration of the slides all neatly boxed up in drawers in my study. Luckily an organisation known as the Historic Environment Image Resource, in Oxford, were able to come to the rescue. They seek to digitise old slides, particularly of sites and landscapes, with a view to preserving images of these locations for posterity. It is a fantastic service and an important one.

Some of my images were labled, many were not. They have recently completed their work on my material and used it to illustrate a blog about the work they do. I’d urge you to have a look at their website – there is a wealth of amazing material there. Where better to escape our current anxieties than losing yourself in the glories of the past?

It is always good to see a piece of research come to publication. In this case it brings back memories of a wonderful trip into the Cairngorms around the time of my 50th birthday to have a look at the location of some Mesolithic finds that had recently come to light during maintenance work on the National Trust for Scotland footpath at Chest of Dee on the Mar Lodge estate.

It was a wonderful location and the lithics were interesting. Evidence for the early communities who used this landscape is hard to find so we were all quite excited. Since then, with the enthusiasm of members of the National Trust for Scotland, Aberdeenshire Archaeology Service, and the Universities of Aberdeen and University College Dublin, we have mounted a programme of archaeological investigation.

Of course, the fieldwork was fun! But as many know, the out-of-doors bit is only a tiny part of any archaeological project. Over the years we have been slowly analysing the finds and drawing in other information in order to try and tease out a picture of the landscape and those who lived there, or passed through it some 9000 years ago.

It is a slow process but we can finally share our thoughts in published form. I hope you find them as interesting as we do.

The project, meanwhile, continues – albeit in a piecemeal fashion. What is interesting is that with the help of Mesolithic Deeside we have been able to extend our thinking to look at the length of the River Dee right down to the sea. These big (for Scotland) rivers were important for all sorts of reasons to the early communities who lived in Scotland and we have a rare chance to build a pretty full picture of the traces they have left along the banks.

So – the work goes on, but it is nice to see this publication out.

Reading the accounts of some excavations in Australia recently has made me rather melancholy. We have amassed a tremendous volume of data and investigation regarding the Mesolithic communities of Scotland. But something will always be missing. The voice of the people themselves. I do understand that is a given, we are, after all, dealing with prehistory. But it is a bit sad isn’t it?

Conventional archaeology relies on the assessment of the significance of every site. Those ascribed a high significance may be preserved, given the finance for detailed excavation, perhaps laid out for interpretation, certainly publicised to both academia and the public. Those ascribed little significance may well disappear without trace. Excavation, if it takes place at all, is likely to be sketchy, publication confined to an archive, or minor paper.

But our assumptions of significance reflect merely the significance of the site to archaeology today. It has no relation to how people saw the place in the past. You do not have to leave serious material clutter in order to consider somewhere to be special. Our own twenty-first century society increasingly emphasises the value of open spaces with minimal human intervention. Thus, crucial archaeological decisions are based on contemporary criteria that relate to our society, not the societies of the past. We are not even looking at representative samples of material culture. The archaeological record for both Palaeolithic and Mesolithic is, for reasons of preservation, usually restricted to stone tools, and we have no idea of the role that those tools performed in relation to the other paraphernalia of everyday life. The ball point pen is essential to my way of life, but it would be hard to assess the significance of modern settlements from the remains of ball point pens alone.

Archaeologists are, I hope, aware of this. But for me it has a wider, more emotional resonance. There is plenty of relevant literature, among which Caroline Bird and her colleagues bring out very clearly the way in which conventional archaeology misses the voice of the very people who engaged with the sites under consideration. They have produced a lovely little book, Kakutungutanta to Warrie Outcamp, which looks at the meaning of a small area of Western Australia and the sites within it to those who have passed through over the last few millennia. There are many strands of evidence including archaeology and its related specialisations, traditional skills including making stone tools, and the narratives and emotional connections of the Nyiyaparli people whose land it is. It is clear that the significance of a site has little to do with the material culture that survives there and everything to do with less tangible factors.

In this the archaeologists who work alongside the Nyiyaparli people are lucky. It is possible to work together, to talk about their evidence and interpretations, and to take this information into account. It has made me horribly aware that when I consider an assemblage of stone tools, the post-holes and pits from which they were excavated, and the view and context of the site itself, I am missing the most important evidence of all, that of those to whom this place was home. They had a voice, but it is gone. We are separated by the gulf of time. How can I ever assess the significance of their places? I feel arrogant even attempting to think about it.

I don’t believe in universal rules of human experience. The more you read, the more you interact with other people, whether from your own community or further afield, the more you realise that no two experiences, no two points of view are ever quite the same. How dare we think we can summarize the outlook of a Mesolithic hunter with a hungry family at home, or a Neolithic sheep farmer whose child has just died?

Archaeology is about researching past communities: it is about people. The people of the past. Yet we are prevented from ever actually reaching them. I feel as if my work will always be incomplete. My understanding of the past certainly is.

Archaeology is important to me. I just love it when it permeates everyday culture. It is a justification in my mind of its significance as an artefact, itself contributing to the way we live now.

I am always happy to come across novels that use archaeology as a cornerstone of their narrative, and I have read some good ones recently. I find that popular fiction provides a great mirror through which to view contemporary lives. So finding archaeology as a motif, is (to me) a signal that it counts. I am even happier to see that the individual authors I have been reading each have their own, very different, ways of using archaeology. I’m not talking about depictions of history or prehistory here, there are plenty of those, rather I am talking about work that makes use of the practice of archaeology.

Not surprisingly, the representation of our profession and its concerns varies considerably across the genre. Two books, in particular, stand out for their contrasting views. One account is positively dystopian, a consideration of the imagined conflict that could result when the outcome of archaeological endeavour has been to question the given wisdom of political and religious authority. It is a bleak prospect. The other muses on the world of those who interpret the past (in this case the Iron Age), to inspire reflections on life as lived today. It is not exactly utopian, there are thoughts on violence, hunger, cold, and loneliness, but it is certainly a much gentler narrative.

It would be hard to find such good examples of polar opposites and I am cheered to see that our discipline can be perceived as so well rounded. Indeed, my experience continues. In addition to some well-research police procedural series, there are novels that revolve around research design and academic teams, novels that use an excavation as their backdrop, and novels inspired by experimental recreation. Of course, they are not always perfect in the fictitious details that they set out, and the quality of the plot can vary (though I have enjoyed all I list here). But, in a way, these flaws merely provide a useful signpost to gaps in the information that we put out. If an author has not picked up on the vagaries of treasure trove regulations or finds reporting, when Iron Age farmers are called hunter-gatherers, surely those provide a reflection of inherent weaknesses in the material people have to hand. It is up to us to make sure that we spread accurate information about our profession as far and wide as we can. And make it as accessible and as wide ranging as possible. Regular readers of this blog will know that I am as passionate about popular dissemination as I am about academic publication.

I do get asked for help with fiction. And, where possible, I try to give it, or at least suggest alternative sources of information. It is easy to be snobbish about some of the projects that others embark upon. But if we don’t help out then we have no right to criticise when we don’t like the final version or find that an author has incorporated inaccuracy. Of course, assistance does not always guarantee the final outcome, but at least we can say that we have tried.

There are, I know, many examples of authors who have played with the ideas that we call archaeology – I’ve listed below some that I find readable and fun. They make you think. If you are interested, I recommend that you hunt them out. Enjoy!

Booklist (I’m not going to tell you which is which from my text above – I will leave you to judge them for yourself).

Robert Harris: The Second Sleep

Sarah Maine: Women of the Dunes

Anne Youngson: Meet Me at the Museum

Penelope Lively: Treasures of Time

SarahMoss: Ghost Wall

Barry Unsworth: Land of Marvels

Elly Griffiths: The Ruth Galloway series (read them in order)

Kate Ellis: the Wesley Peterson series (read in order)

Rob Swigart: Stone Mirror

Anne Cleeves: Shetland detective Jimmy Perez is no stranger to local archaeology

Ian Rankin: Inspector Rebus has occasionally encountered archaeologists in Edinburgh

John Preston: The Dig

Enjoy!