River of Stone: heritage and community in Caithness
AOC Archaeology Group has joined forces with the Caithness Archaeological Trust in a bid to encourage regional economic benefit from the archaeology of Caithness. The exciting River of Stone project follows the feasibility study completed by AOC Archaeology Group and the Caithness Archaeological Trust, supported by funding from Caithness and Sutherland Enterprise, which outlines the advantages of working with communities to promote the fascinating history of sites as a way of adding to a region’s attraction as a place to visit or live. The River of Stone Project is thus founded on a sophisticated analysis of the number, location, diversity, cultural value and accessibility of the 6,500 sites and monuments in the region, correlated with local community heritage groups and existing heritage initiatives. For a free copy of the feasibility study click here.
The heritage of Caithness constitutes a rich resource. However, only part of it is visible and a smaller part, accessible. All of it is capable of interpretation and presentation although a mere handful of sites are currently in that position. Many of the most visible monuments in Caithness are in a state of decay; and that decay is a reduction from the condition in which they were left by their Victorian investigators. No Caithness site has had anything like the volume of publications dedicated, for example to the Orcadian site of Maes Howe. Thus, to present the Caithness sites effectively to the public AOC Archaeology Group recognised the need for a larger scale of intervention, for health and safety reasons, for the provision of public access and for the garnishing of sufficient information to facilitate their interpretation. The feasibility study established a set of research agendas for Caithness that would attract and guide investigation of sites and monuments whose elucidation would greatly assist us in the interpretation and presentation of the county’s heritage.
Chairman of Caithness Archaeological Trust, the Earl of Caithness said: “This Trust was set up to create a strategy for the development of the archaeological resource of Caithness. Over the last three years we have achieved this thanks to the efforts of our own archaeological development officer and by working in close partnership with others. We must now move ahead and, by formalising our link with AOC Archaeology Group, we can bring further substantial benefits to Caithness.”
John Barber, Managing Director of AOC Archaeology Group added: “This region has so much first class archaeology. By working with the Caithness Archaeological Trust and local communities we can promote more sites and simultaneously provide training and educational opportunities. This will enable us to extend the very successful work we have carried out in the last three years with the community at Spittal, to other parts of the region.”
Now that the River of Stone is underway, a network of projects has developed across Caithness to advance the ethical use of the heritage by and for the local communities, and to advance the understanding and appreciation of that heritage. This programme of archaeological research is unrivalled in any other part of Britain.
Over the summers of 2006 and 2007 projects investigated a range of sites including Neolithic and Bronze Age cairns, Iron Age brochs and crannogs, medieval castles and shipwrecks. One of these projects, the innovative Early Architecture Research Programme (EARP) continued its modern reconstructions of Neolithic Chambered Cairns and Iron Age brochs. Led by John Barber of AOC Archaeology Group, this project over the past three years has built and demolished a series of early structures in controlled experiments designed to help understand the architecture and engineering of these complex monuments. The EARP project will provide lessons for archaeologists across Britain in assisting the understanding, interpretation and conservation of drystone archaeological monuments. John Barber of AOC Archaeology Group has also led another research team during the excavation of the Iron Age Broch at Keiss.
AOC Archaeology Group Managing Director: John Barber
Client: Caithness Archaeological Trust
