Throughout history some areas have been less attractive for living and farming than others. These areas are identified as marginal because of environmental, economic or socio-political factors. How can we recognise marginality in the archaeological record? How particularly can environmental remains be interpreted? And how can we interpret human strategies when faced with a marginal environment? Most of the papers in this volume focus on Scottish contexts, reflecting their origins at the 1992 meeting of the Association for Environmental Archaeology in Edinburgh. However Greek pastoralism and the problems of food supply in the Egyptian and Syrian deserts are also examined.

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Editors’ acknowledgments
• Clinging on for grim life: an introduction to marginality as an archaeological issue: Geraint Coles and Coralie M Mills
• MARGINALITY: THE ROLE OF ENVIRONMENTAL AND SOCIO-ECONOMIC FACTORS
  • 1 Cereal cultivation on the Anglo-Scottish Border during the ‘Little Ice Age’: Richard Tipping
  • 2 Bad for trees – Bad for humans?: Michael G L Baillie
  • 3. The response of marginal societies and ecosystems in Britain to Icelandic volcanic eruptions: John Grattan
  • 4 Human responses to marginality: Ian Armit
• ARCHAEOLOGICAL RECOGNITION OF STRESS AND MARGINALITY
  • 5 The spread of cultivation into the marginal land in Ireland during the 18th and early 19th centuries: Jonathan Bell
  • 6 The facts don’t speak for themselves: Mervyn Watson
  • 7 Calf slaughter as a response to marginality: Finbar McCormick
  • 8 On the outside looking in: a view of animal bones in Roman Britain from the North West Frontier: Sue Stallibrass
  • 9 Disturbance and regeneration phases in pollen diagrams and their relevance to concepts of marginality: Kevin J Edwards and Graeme Whittington
  • 10 Shredding and the production of winter fodder in northern Greece. An interim statement on the archaeological detectability of shredding: John Tierney
• HUMAN ADAPTATION TO ADVERSITY
  • 11 A study of anthropogenic activity and pedogenesis from the 2nd millennium BC to the 2nd millennium AD at Lairg, northern Scotland: Timothy G Acott
  • 12 Beyond the fringe? Recognising change and adaptation in Pictish and Norse Orkney: Julie M Bond
  • 13 Early land management at Tofts Ness, Sanday, Orkney: the evidence of thin section micromorphology: Ian A Simpson
  • 14 The use of peat and other organic sediments as fuel in northern Scotland: identifications derived from soil thin sections: Stephen Carter
  • 15 Past uses of turf in the Northern Isles: Camilla Dickson
  • 16 Dark Age agricultural practices and environmental change: evidence from Tentsmuir, Fife, eastern Scotland: Graeme Whittington and John McManus
  • 17 Roman Egypt – provisioning the settlements of the Eastern Desert, with particular reference to the quarry settlement of Mons Claudianus: Sheila Hamilton-Dyer
  • 18 An exploratory survey of the water supply structures on the Syrian and Egyptian pilgrim routes to Mecca and Medinah: Ibrahim M Al-Resseeni, Lawrence A S Butler, Pauline E Kneale and Adrian T McDonald
• ARCHAEOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS OF MARGINALITY
  • 19 Marginality, multiple estates and environmental change: the case of Lindisfarne: Tony Brown, Sarah Crane, Deirdre O’Sullivan, Kevin Walsh and Rob Young
  • 20 Environmental stress in the Herefordshire and Shropshire uplands: Clare de Rouffignac
  • 21 The South Nesting Palaeolandscape Project, Shetland: mires, mounds and margins: Terry O’Connor
  • 22 Identifying marginality in the first and second millennia BC in the Strath of Kildonan, Sutherland: David C Cowley
  • 23 Animal husbandry in a wetland: the case of Assendelft: Louise van Wijngaarden-Bakker
  • 24 Douara Cave, Syria: the botanical evidence from a Palaeolithic site in an arid zone: Frances S McLaren
• List of contributors