BELOW Signs of human activity are visible all over the lochside. A small landing place is visible in the foreground while a cairidh, or fish-trap, is visible in the centre. The remains of feannagan, or cultivation ridges, can be seen on the rising ground in the centre. The kelp industry influenced dramatic social change on the islands, with traditional subsistence townships being replaced by kelpers’ houses and bothies, before the whole area was abandoned to grazing within just one or two generations.

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Sifting through the remains of Scotland’s kelping industry

For a brief period, from around 1750 to 1820, the west coast and islands of Scotland experienced a boom in demand for kelp, a seaweed-derived substance used in the soap and glass-making industries. Kevin Grant – formerly St Kilda Archaeologist with the National Trust for Scotland, now Archaeology Manager at Historic Environment Scotland – has been studying the fragile and elusive remains of this once-thriving industry, as Current Archaeology's Chris Catling reports.

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Current Archaeology

November 5, 2020

Today, the word ‘kelp’ is most commonly used to refer to several species of red, brown, and yellow seaweed, but in industrial contexts it refers to a glassy, oily product created by burning dried seaweed. Kelp was, and remains, an important source of sodium, potassium, and iodine, used in the processes of glass and soap manufacture, as well as in medicine and as a thickening agent in foods and toothpaste. From the 16th century, the major source of these chemicals was barilla, imported from Spain. Made by burning glasswort, barilla was purer and chemically more consistent than rival products, such as the kelp ash produced in Ireland and the Scilly Isles, but war on the Continent in the 18

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