Survey of Marginal Lands
551 1/4/12
Description Survey of Marginal Lands
Date 1951 to 1958
Collection Records of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS), Edinbu
Catalogue Number 551 1/4/12
Category All Other
Scope and Content Site descriptions are available in the library, and online as PDFs: see 'Digital Files'. Plane-table surveys and inked drawings are availble to view in the search room, and online: see 'Digital Images'. Project description: During the 1950s, RCAHMS undertook a survey of the 'marginal lands' of Scotland, the conversion of which to arable agriculture was causing a serious threat to archaeological sites. The project was suggested by one of the RCAHMS archaeological investigators, Kenneth Steer, and agreed by the Secretary Angus Graham and the Commissioners in November 1949. The main staff involved were K Steer, RW Feachem and A MacLaren. Lists of the [new] monuments discovered during the survey were published at the beginning of the RCAHMS Selkirk (1957) and RCAHMS Stirling (1963) inventories. Three volumes of typescripts in the RCAHMS library contain over 600 site descriptions written as a result of the survey, arranged in county and parish order. Over 200 pencil plane-table survey plans are catalogued to individual site records. Most of the plans were undertaken at a scale of 1:300. Some of the plans were inked and lettered in the 1950s, though few were published. A further suite were inked up as a training exercise for draughtsmen during the mid-1970s. The field notebooks used in the survey are stored in the manuscript collection at RCAHMS. Information from the Marginal Land Survey was subsequently included in the publication of Lanarkshire (1978) and Argyll, and a large number of the site descriptions were included in a summarised form in Feachem's Guide to Prehistoric Scotland (1963). The plans were catalogued and digitised during 2012 and 2013. Information from RCAHMS (GF Geddes) 2013
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