Rising damp; challenging perceptions of wetland settlement in SW Scotland
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 2015-11-26

Anne Crone
AOC ARCHAEOLOGY GROUP
The work of the Scottish Wetland Archaeology Programme is revealing great variation in the types of wetland site used during the Iron Age in SW Scotland. Black Loch of Myrton had been labelled a crannog since its discovery in the 19th century but excavations in 2013 have revealed that it was actually an Iron Age loch-village, the Scottish equivalent of the iconic Glastonbury Lake Village in Somerset. This discovery has prompted many questions, not least of which is whether any or many of the other sites identified as crannogs in the 19th century were also loch-villages. Are these Iron Age villages translated into a wetland setting, an interim stage between the roundhouse settlements of the terrestrial record and the man-made island
dwelling? As a hitherto undistinguished site-type is the loch-village indicative of social and/or economic differences amongst the populace or simply evidence of the diversity of the people/place relationship in the densely occupied territory? Were the occupants a separate social group with a distinct identity or are they part of a larger economic and social unit within which they have a distinct role which required them to live out on the peat? To address these questions the site will be presented within it physical context and that of its Iron Age landscape, and the evidence from Black Loch of Myrton will be interrogated for clues as to why its occupants built and lived on the peaty margins of a small loch.