Welcome to
the
North-Western Edge of Europe
And welcome in particular to three places strung
out along the western Atlantic rim.
Mayo
in the west of Ireland, Mid-Argyll
on the west coast of Scotland, and Vestvågøy,
Norway well inside the Arctic Circle.
You are invited to explore the landscape and
archaeology of these three places, Discover the
signposts of the peoples who helped shape the
landscapes that we see today.
What can we learn about these human lives and
the organisation of their society? In particular,
to understand this we must ask who had power and
how did they exercise it? How did they obtain and
keep hold of power, and how did it shape their
society? How was this power reflected in the
landscape they moulded, in the monuments and
artefacts and writings they left behind?
These societies were not static. Over the
centuries great changes took place, in technology,
in social organisation and in religious belief. How
did these changes occur, and what brought them
about? And in the face of such changes, what
remained constant?
The modern imagination sees the world as a
series of distinct and self-contained countries,
often separated by seas and oceans. But for most of
human history the reverse is true. It was easier in
the first millennium to travel by boat than by
land. So the sea was not something that separated
one country from another; it connected places to
each other. It was a sea-road, a bridge between
peoples and languages and cultures.
Along the sea-roads we will see how ideas and
languages were carried great distances by traders,
farmers, monks, and warriors linking Mayo,
Kilmartin and Borg together.
We will see how changes in technology brought
about change in a whole society. The discovery of
iron-working, for example, enabled new power
structures to emerge. The advanced keel of a ship
allowed raiders to attack their victims faster and
more fiercely. For modern comparison, think how the
splitting of the atom changed the world, giving
vast power to those who could use this new
technology for military purposes.
But changes were driven not only by technology.
There were changes in thought too: the spread of
Christianity for example, the rise of kingship, the
writing down of laws. All these things caused
transformations in people's lives. Ideas were also
easily transported along the sea-roads, along with
gold, slaves, glass and other commodities.
We can learn to read these landscapes, rich in
monuments by which men and women expressed their
deepest beliefs. We can read the archaeological
remains, the artefacts and the debris of their
lives, which can speak to us today of their
ordinary struggles and celebrations. We can read
their own writings, and the writings of their
contemporaries. Slowly and tentatively, we can
piece together pictures of the communities who
lived here, and begin to understand them, and
perhaps even to bridge the sea of history which
stands between us.
We can travel in time.
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This
project has been supported by the EU as part of the Culture
2000 programme.