High Pasture Cave: Ritual, Memory, and Identity in the Iron Age of Skye - Hardcover

Birch, Steven; McKenzie, Jo

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 178570950X ISBN 13: 9781785709500

Publisher: Oxbow Books, 2025

Synopsis

High Pasture Cave, located on the island of Skye, Scotland, occupies a liminal location on the very edge of a settlement and appears to have been a focus for specific and special activities. Its extended period of use is indicated by ephemeral signs of Neolithic Activity, limited Bronze Age usage, and vast artifactual and environmental assemblages recovered dating to the Early to Middle Scottish Iron Age, c.800 BC to AD 150.
Footsteps in the Dark details the research-led excavations at the cave and its context in the landscape, including geology and stratigraphy, the use and transformation of the cave from the Neolithic, post-Medieval activity after the site’s closure, chronology and radiocarbon dating, the human remains, and stable isotope analysis.
The examination of the site indicates that the High Pasture Cave Complex was a special place, a focus for significant communal events, for undertaking ritual and special activities, and a place for deposition of significant objects – a place whose significance remained embedded in social memory long after active use ceased. These findings challenge our current understanding with regards to cave use and function, and with relation to the wider understanding of Iron Age cultural and religious beliefs.

About this title

About the Author

Steven Birch is a freelance archaeologist and director of West Coast Archaeological Services. He is co-director of the High Pasture Cave and Environs Project. He is interested in British Archaeology of all periods, but more specifically the prehistory of Scotland, including the use of caves and the Mesolithic period.

Helen Drinkall is an archaeological technician at the University of Durham. A member of the Prehistory of Eurasia Research Group, she specializes in lithic analysis, the British Lower Palaeolithic, hominin landscapes and mobility, GIS analysis, and OSL dating.

Gemma Cruickshanks is post-excavation officer at the Scottish History and Archaeology Department at National Museums Scotland, and is currently undertaking a PhD at the University of Edinburgh. Her research interests include material culture during the first millennia BC and AD, particularly iron, ironworking, worked bone and antler, and pottery.

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxbow Books
• Publication date: 2025
• ISBN 10: 178570950X
• ISBN 13: 9781785709500
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 656