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Starts: 19:00
Ends: 21:00
HAF Festival Keynote Talk
High Pasture Cave: Ritual, Memory and Identity in the Iron Age of Skye
HAF Keynote Talk by Steven Birch
Venue: Council Chambers, Glenurquhart Road, Inverness (use glass door entrance at west of building)
No need to book.
Suggested donation: £3
From the first steps taken into the darkness of High Pasture Cave, it was clear that this complex site would challenge current thinking on cave use and function in prehistory, and wider understanding of Iron Age cultural practice and beliefs. Situated in a dramatic location under the slopes of the Cuillin Mountains on Scotland’s Isle of Skye, this cave and its monumentalised environs were a focus for specific and special activities throughout the Iron Age - a venue for spectacular and extensive ceremonies featuring feasts, fire, crafts and the symbolic deposition of a plethora of artefacts and environmental materials, as well as human remains.
Recent research has led to a resurgence of interest in caves, in particular the place of these enigmatic sites in the worldviews of later prehistoric communities. Their investigation in the past has generally attributed a domestic function, comprising temporary homes and shelter for hunter-gatherers, farmers and pastoralists, and as workshops and places of refuge. However, it is now proposed that many caves, including High Pasture, were used for rituals involving the preparation and display of human remains, the deposition of material culture and other types of organic materials. These were clearly performative acts and the recurrent use of caves as the arenas for such performances, tells us much about their role in the cosmology of later prehistoric communities.
This presentation will discuss the key themes and avenues of research resulting from our investigations of this enigmatic site including the activities taking place there, and how the cave and its immediate surroundings became a repository of materials connected to processes of memory and identity spanning at least 800 years through the Iron Age, but with evidence of earlier use extending back to the Early Bronze Age. A significant element of these discussions will also focus on the people who inhabited this special place in the landscape, from its’ inception as a possible shrine used by the inhabitants of nearby settlements, to a major centre of aggregation attracting people from areas of Scotland beyond Skye.
Steven Birch is a freelance archaeologist working in the Highlands of Scotland and is co-director of the High Pasture Cave Project. He graduated in 2005 from the University of Aberdeen with an MA in Scottish Archaeology and his broad research interests include Scottish prehistory, with a particular focus on the use and function of cave and rockshelter sites. Recent excavations have included the Fiskavaig rockshelter in Skye and a number of old sea caves on the Black Isle as archaeological supervisor to the Rosemarkie Caves Project.
The final publication for High Pasture Cave will be published in early 2023.
