For the final two legs of my tour of Scotland, I will head south and east – first, in this column, to the Central Belt, including the cities of Glasgow and Edinburgh, and then, in the next issue, to the Borders. As a reminder, these columns on Scotland are dedicated to the memory of Katharine MacDonald (1976-2022), an old friend, outstanding archaeologist, and proud Scotswoman.
Glasgow and Strathclyde
Current Archaeology’s visits to this part of Scotland have, it is fair to say, been infrequent and, to use an archaeological turn of phrase, unstratified. There are some great sites and finds, but no consistent story to be told. Heading broadly west to east seems easiest, so I will begin on the Isle of Arran, whose prehistoric settlements were explored in CA 83 (August 1982), then specifically the prehistoric stone circles of Machrie Moor in CA 176 and 294 (November 2001 and September 2014). Those interested more generally in the prehistoric and later landscape archaeology of this part of Scotland should also examine CA 138 (April/May 1994), which explores the recessed platforms found in quantity in this area.
To take a complete turn of topic, my next visit is to Pollphail – a short hop geographically north across the Firth of Clyde but a world, and millennia, away. Pollphail is home to an abandoned 1970s settlement, a legacy of the early optimism of the North Sea oil boom. It featured in CA 243 (June 2010) in one of the most unusual, and most recent, sites yet visited by the magazine. The location is an eerie one, more akin to the set of a zombie movie than an archaeological site, even more so given its atmospheric coastal setting.
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