Landscapes of Production: Exploring the Palaeaoenvironmental Context of Stone Tool Quarrying, Manufacture, Use and Deposition on Neolithic Shetland

"The Landscapes of Production project will explore the palaeoenvironmental context of felsite tool quarrying in Neolithic Shetland. Shetland is the northernmost part of Europe where agriculture was practised during the Neolithic, and shortly after arriving on Shetland in the early 4th millennia BC, people began to quarry and manufacture polished stone tools on an impressive scale (Cooney et al 2019). The preservation of these quarries is unprecedented, yet we know little about wider Early Neolithic society. The project will address this gap by using geospatial and palaeaoenvironmental analysis to explore the environmental context of these artefacts, including important questions surrounding the function of tools, and the rate and timing of deforestation during the Neolithic period.

The project will have three work packages:

1) Data Collation and synthesis: This step will involve the collation of existing archaeological and palaeoecological data into a geospatial database, and comparing these to similar datasets on Orkney and The Western Isles. The geospatial component will form the data management backbone of the project

2) Data collection and fieldwork: Palaeoenvironmental data for Shetland focuses largely on Mainland. The small number of cores from elsewhere on the island suggest differing patterns of deforestation and landscape change in Prehistory (Edwards et al. 2005). Given the incredibly rich prehistoric archaeological record on Shetland, there are still relatively few detailed palaeoenvironmental studies of vegetation and landscape change. This step will involve the collection of cores at two contemporary Neolithic sites associate with felsite tools at Modesty (settlement) and on Ronas Hill (quarry). Pollen analysis and associated proxies (e.g. microscopic charcoal, non-pollen palynomorphs, and sediment geochemistry) will be combined with 14C dating to produce new high-resolution records of vegetation and landscape change for these areas, with specific focus on the Neolithic period.

3) Data management and analysis: This step will use data on archaeology and palaeoecology collected in step 1 and new palaeoecological data collected in step 2, to explore ways to model this relationship in past landscapes, using spatial statistics and land-use modelling approaches. It will then identify significant relationships between landscape change and archaeological activity."