RCAHMS Structures Database - Waternish

Description RCAHMS Structures Database - Waternish

Date 1990

Collection Records of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS), Edinbu

Catalogue Number DX 001420

Category Digital Files (Non-image)

Copies MS 731/2

Scope and Content METHOD OF SURVEY A preliminary analysis of the available vertical aerial photographs of the Watenish peninsula revealed a nearly continuous landscape of abandoned townships, cultivation ridges, fields, and farm boundaries, extending from Bay in the south to Unish Point in the north, a distance of some 15km. The extent of these remains posed considerable mapping and surveying problems, and, because of the quality of the surviving archaeology, 1:2,500 was selected as the most appropriate recording scale for much of the work. This was achieved using a combination of Electronic Distance Measurer (EDM) survey and the transcription of detail from RAF vertical air photographs. In all, some 45 square kilometres were mapped in this way; the remainder of the peninsula, in which the archaeological sites are more thinly spread, was mapped at 1:10,000. Aerial photographs were also used for mapping in areas that had subsequently been afforested, but these areas were not ground-checked; similarly, the islands of Mingay and Isay were transcribed, but, for logistical reasons, were not visited. Unlike earlier RCAHMS surveys, all unroofed or partially unroofed structures were recorded, including the many early croft houses that had been in occupation at the time of the 1st or 2nd edition of the OS 6-inch maps (1880 and 1904). In order to cope with the amount of data gathered in the field as a result of recording such a large number of buildings and huts, a form was devised for logging the preliminary notes; later, these were computerised as a database. Together, the database and the 1:2,500 and 1:10,000 maps form the archive of the survey, and from these the 385 entries in the National Monuments Record of Scotland have been derived. Some 1500 separate structures were recorded, 1482 of which formed individual entries in the database.

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/collection/2028720

File Format (CSV) Delimited text files