‘Hearing’ heritage: The Kirkyard of St Mary’s of the Lowes
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 17/04/2017

Responding to the questions: “How do we [who?] ‘see’ [‘hear’] the past”? and “What role has [whose?] memory in the visualisation of narrative constructs”? This illustrated presentation will take as its starting point a public information board at the kirkyard of St Mary’s of the Lowes. Located in the Scottish Borders region, this now-derelict site overlooks St. Mary’s Loch, the source of the Jarrow Water, a tributary of the Ettrick Water, both of which flow through an area associated with two popular traditional Borders ballads: Dowie Dens of Yarrow and Tam Lin.
Drawing on Gemma Corradi Fiumara’s The Other Side of Language and the work of Roger Strand and others in the field of post-normal science, together with a recent archaeological study of the site (http://www.borderarchaeology.co.uk/home/sites/st-mary-s-kirkyard) the presentation uses the two ballads to draw attention to what is left ‘unheard’ and so unspoken by the authors of this public information board.
The presentation is oriented by Strand’s concern with the crisis in science as this relates to the formation of a dominant life-world where the illusion of “merely fact-minded sciences” continues to “make merely fact-minded people”, and at the expense of “a genuine humanity” (Husserl 1936/1970:6). As an alternative the presentation builds on a disciplinary agnosticism linked to the practice of notitia as “a careful attention that is sustained, patient, subtly attuned to images and
metaphor”, is able ‘to track both hidden meanings and surface presentations’ (Watkins 2008: 419).


Iain Biggs, University of Dundee and Bath Spa University,