Mid-Argyll Theme
- 13
The changing landscape of
Kilmartin
How did the landscape around Kilmartin acquire
its present form? It is a kind of palimpsest - a
manuscript on which every new text written by the
past has left its mark. Its present appearance is
the result of a series of dramatic events over the
last 10,000 years, brought about by climatic change
and by human hand.
At the end of the last Ice Age, about 10,000
years ago, the glaciers began to retreat from
Kilmartin. They had arrived from the north down
Loch Awe to a southerly limit around Ford. As these
glaciers shrank back a great river of meltwater
flowed south down the Kilmartin valley and out to
the sea, past Loch Crinan. These waters deposited
banks of glacial till and gravel along the valley
sides to form flat terraces, like the terrace where
Kilmartin village is perched today.
Kilmartin village sits on the gravel terrace
above the valley floor
As the glaciers retreated, the land was no
longer held down by the weight of ice, and it began
to rise again. Now, to run out to the sea, these
huge meltwater rivers had to cut a valley through
their own terraces.
Today, however, no great river flows down from
Loch Awe, past the village of Kilmartin. The tiny
stream that now runs here looks remarkably out of
place in the wide Kilmartin valley. The water from
Loch Awe now flows east at its northern end through
the Pass of Brander.
Plants moved to clothe the bare bones of this
ice-sculpted landscape as the climate warmed. The
first to arrive were tundra species such as
bearberry and juniper, followed by birch. Woodland
diversified and expanded as climate continued to
warm until about 5000 years ago, when the hills of
Kilmartin were covered with oak, elm and hazel
woodland.
Up to this time, people had been living as
hunter-gatherers in a semi nomadic lifestyle.
Argyll and its islands would have been a generous
landscape for them, its woodlands providing edible
plants and game, its rivers and lochs filled with
fish. In Kilmartin, there is scattered evidence of
these people, in caves where they stayed and on
islands where middens, their rubbish heaps, hold
fragmentary evidence of their lifestyle and
diet.
However, this is the point, about 5000 years
ago, when human activity starts to etch real marks
on Kilmartin's landscape. From within the oak
woodlands, humans started to make small clearings,
designed perhaps to concentrate game and encourage
the growth of edible plants like hazel, bramble and
nettle.
Although this phase of activity was lost from
the landscape record when the woodland disappeared,
the next stage left permanent marks. On suitable
ground, people made clearances for agriculture.
Larger areas were cleared for farming and herds of
animals grazed the higher hills. Along with this
change to farming was the construction of the
prehistoric ceremonial monuments for which
Kilmartin is renowned, the linear
cemetery stretching the length of Kilmartin,
the standing stones at Nether Largie and the henge
at Ballymeanoch. All are likely to have been built
in a cleared landscape where impressive monuments
could be seen from a distance.
As metal working technology improved, the farmed
landscape was developed and clearance of the
woodlands continued until, by the start of the
first millennium AD, much of the Kilmartin valley
was open, cleared by humans. Meanwhile the thin
covering of peat grew deeper, assisted by the
change to a cooler and wetter climate.
This was the time of Dál
Riata when mid Argyll was a centre of power,
rich and busy with trade. From here the landscape
story becomes more familiar as we enter the history
books. The landscape changed once again
dramatically as a farmed landscape, peopled with
small and scattered settlements, gave way in the
18th and 19th centuries to sheep farming. Wealthy
landowners forced thousands of people from their
lands and homes in 'the Clearances', so that many
of the glens were severely depopulated to make way
for sheep, and many of the cleared families left
Scotland for good.
The deserted farming
settlement at Brenphort can be seen in the
foreground
As people and communities made way for sheep,
the peatlands around Dunadd were drained and much
of the peat dug away, revealing for the first time
in many centuries some of the pre-historic
monuments. The landscape remained open but
increasingly dominated by rough pasture and
encroaching bracken.
Economic interests still re-shape the landscape
here. One important prehistoric site in the valley,
including the remains of a large henge monument and
several burials, was recently destroyed by a large
gravel quarry.
The arrival of commercial plantations of sitka
spruce cloaked the hillsides in blue-green, then as
the trees mature and are clear-felled the bare
bones of the hillsides are exposed once more.
|
This
project has been supported by the EU as part of the Culture
2000 programme.