RCAHMS Archaeological Field Survey, Shetland (Unst/Walls)

In 2010 the Commission undertook two 10-day trips to Shetland to evaluate a new methodology for the rapid survey and recording of archaeological monuments in large areas of landscape based on a desk-based interpretation of high-resolution colour vertical aerial imagery followed by fieldwork. The first survey was undertaken at Sandwick Bay on the east coast of Unst, where the landscape is characterised by abandoned 19th- and 20th-century buildings, enclosures and fields. Underlying these features, however, are the extensive but more subtle remains of earlier settlement. These include thick-walled prehistoric buildings, and cultivation which comprises irregular plots bounded by low walls and banks, more regularly shaped areas defined by lynchets and larger rectangular fields that run perpendicular to the coast. The survey succeeded in identifying a number of previously unrecorded prehistoric and medieval structures and established a relative chronological framework for the different periods of cultivation.

The Walls survey area included a high proportion of ground that was either open peaty moorland or, at best, rough grazing enclosed within stone walls or fences. The majority of the earliest monuments, including Neolithic cairns and settlements, as well as field-systems defined by low boulder walls (most of them largely obscured by peat), were found in the former area. Some prehistoric monuments, predominantly burnt mounds and hut-circles but also one standing stone, were recorded in the latter, but here the landscape is mainly characterised by the remains of abandoned farmsteads and crofts, and a large number of associated planticrubs, kaleyards and peat stands were recorded.

Information from RCAHMS (DES 2010, 194)

Work on the writing up of the Commission’s landscape surveys in Walls and Unst in 2010 continued throughout 2011. To date over 1200 site descriptions and almost 400 digital images have been entered into the RCAHMS database and are accessible through Canmore.

Information from RCAHMS (DES 2011, 201)

The writing up of the RCAHMS survey in Shetland in 2010 continued throughout 2012 with the total number of new or revised site descriptions entered into Canmore now exceeding 1400.

Information from RCAHMS (DES 2012, 195)