EHG435 - Walkover survey - Loch of Yarrows environs

Archaeological field survey was undertaken by students of the Department of Archaeology at University of Edinburgh led by Prof. R Mercer in 1983 as the focus of survey work undertaken in Caithness was shifted to the east (or southeast). This region had hitherto fallen outwith the scope of a programme of survey work undertaken since 1976 (see EHG) and perhaps formed the one major part of Caithness, rich in monument concentration, that was unrepresented within the work conducted. A three-year project was initiated with the intention being to survey an area in the east with the modern A9 trunk road which formed a common boundary with the Coastal Survey undertaken by C Batey (see EHG405) and to the west a sinuous boundary (coinciding where at all possible with visible features) sought to include all land east of the western boundary of the Rumster forest and Camster (ND 262428) to the Hill of Yarrows (ND 295428) and ultimately to Thrumster at ND 334447. The 1983 season, the first element of the proposed three season project covered c.10km². The area concerned was that lying between the Loch of Yarrows to the north and Loch Watenan to the south. It was an area of high relief, by the standards of the county in which it is set, induced by faulting of the Middle Red sandstone that elsewhere forms the geological base of the area. This high relief had created a number of basins within which natural lochs had formed which had at various times been enhanced by man's intervention, whether for modern water supply as in the case of Loch of Yarrows, or for earlier mill energy as with Groats Loch. This distortion of former loch margins must account for some loss of archaeological material in the area (of which the partial flooding of the Broch of Yarrows was perhaps the most obvious example). Apart from the north, west and south margins of the Loch of Yarrows and the south margin of Loch Watenan where improvement has taken place, the area was entirely given over to upland grazing with a cover of heather and grass based upon thin peat. The area was apparently subject to some overgrazing and indeed was visited a great deal by human traffic both of which uses have induced a degree of peat erosion, at a number of points, that must be of concern to those interested in the conservation of the area. The general lack of improvement prevalent in the area had engendered the survival of a very considerable number of monuments of prehistoric date as well as, within those areas that had been subject to improvement, the existence of substantial fossil landscapes of much later date. Indeed it was felt that on this 'rim' of unimproved land set around the Caithness plateau there might survive unimpaired by the 'Improvements' of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries A.D. remnants of previously existing landscapes absent elsewhere. Indications that this might well be the case had been observed in the coastal survey in the strip of land surveyed between Melvich and Reay (see EHG422). <1>