Footsteps in the Dark: Ritual, Memory and Identity at the High Pasture Cave Complex, Skye

High Pasture Cave served as a significant site for ritual activities and communal events from the Neolithic thought the Scottish Iron Age.

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 artefactual and environmental assemblages recovered dating to the Early to Middle Scottish Iron Age, c. 800 BC to AD 150.

High Pasture Cave 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.

Table of Contents

List of figures
List of tables
Contributors
Acknowledgments
Summary
Gearr-chunntas: Gaelic summary
Résumé: French summary
Zusammenfasung: German summary
Guide to geological and archaeological terms and abbreviations
Summary of chronological schemes

Part I. INTRODUCTION TO THE HIGH PASTURE CAVE COMPLEX
1. Footsteps in the dark
2. The cave in the landscape: geology, geomorphology, and sedimentology
3. The cave in the site: passage, precinct, stairwells, and periphery
4. Stratigraphy and phasing

Part II. THE HIGH PASTURE CAVE COMPLEX THROUGH TIME
5. High Pasture Cave before the Iron Age
6. Transformation to sacred place: the Early Iron Age
7. Redefining ritual space through the Middle Iron Age
8. Towards closure
9. Later activities during the Post Medieval period

Part III. CHRONOLOGIES OF DEPOSITION: TIME AND PEOPLE
10. Chronology: radiocarbon dating and Bayesian analysis
11. Curating the dead

Part IV. BIOGRAPHIES IN LIFE AND DEATH: MATERIAL CULTURE
12. Complex Biographies in Life and Death: Material Culture

Part V. OFFERINGS FROM THE LAND
13. Offerings from the land: the environmental assemblages

Part VI. RITUAL, MEMORY, AND IDENTITY: HIGH PASTURE THROUGH TIME
14. Ritual, memory, and identity: High Pasture through time

Bibliography
Index

Steven Birch is a freelance archaeologist working in the Highlands of Scotland and is co-director of the High Pasture Cave Project. Graduating in 2005 from the University of Aberdeen, his broad research interests include Scottish prehistory, with a particular focus on the use and function of cave and rockshelter sites.

Jo McKenzie works as an independent researcher specializing in geoarchaeology and Scottish prehistory, with particular interests in soil micromorphology, ceramic petrography, and the Neolithic to Iron Age in Scotland and the Northern Isles. She completed her PhD at the University of Stirling in 2006.