Identifying Social Transformations and Crisis during the Pre-Monastic to Post-Viking era on Iona: New Insights from a Palynological and Palaeoentomological Perspective

Samantha E. Jones, Enid P. Allison, Ewan Campbell, Nick Evans, Tim Mighall and Gordon Noble

Environmental Archaeology, 2022, vol. 27, issue 2, 168-192

Abstract: Iona is renowned for its early monastery, founded following the arrival of Columba in AD 563. This paper uses palaeoecological data to provide insight into the social and environmental transformations that influenced the landscape of Iona during the later prehistoric and historic periods. The identification of cereal pollen suggests that arable farming occurred during the Bronze Age and possibly continued through the Iron Age. Pastoral farming was also practiced. It remains unclear as to whether there were people living on the island at the time of the monastic community’s arrival. Between AD 630 and 1100, woodland clearance and farming occurred. There were also two phases of woodland regeneration and agricultural decline. The first phase coincides with the period of Viking raids and may have witnessed a decline in population. The second phase occurred in conjunction with increased Scandinavian influence and political restructuring across the wider region; however, small-scale farming continued. After c. AD 1000 there was renewed intensification of landscape management prior to the arrival of Benedictine monks and Augustinian nuns (c. AD 1200). This may be linked to climatic amelioration during the Medieval Warm Period and economic growth in the Hebrides.

Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/14614103.2020.1713581 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:yenvxx:v:27:y:2022:i:2:p:168-192

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/yenv20

DOI: 10.1080/14614103.2020.1713581

Access Statistics for this article

Environmental Archaeology is currently edited by Tim Mighall

More articles in Environmental Archaeology from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().