Redland: Eday's Farm Mound
The archaeological landscape of Eday is not limited to prehistoric monuments. Agricultural activity has shaped the island for thousands of years, leaving behind settlement mounds, field systems, buildings, and other traces.
Redland represents the importance of farm-related archaeological remains in reconstructing how people used Eday's landscape.
Farming in Orkney
Agriculture became established in Orkney during the Neolithic.
Early farmers cultivated cereals and kept domesticated animals. Over succeeding centuries, agricultural practices changed but remained central to island life.
The landscape therefore contains evidence for repeated cycles of:
Cultivation
Pastoralism
Settlement
Abandonment
Reoccupation
Field expansion
A mound associated with farming may preserve multiple phases of this history.
What a Farm Mound Can Preserve
Archaeological mounds can contain layers representing former occupation.
These may include:
Stone structures
Floors
Hearths
Animal bone
Charcoal
Pottery
Metal objects
Agricultural debris
The accumulation of these materials can gradually produce a raised feature.
What appears to be a natural mound may therefore contain evidence for centuries of human activity.
Landscape Change
Modern agricultural fields can obscure prehistoric landscapes.
Fences, drainage channels, roads, and later buildings may cover or disturb older archaeological remains.
Archaeologists therefore increasingly combine fieldwalking, aerial photography, LiDAR, geophysical survey, and environmental sampling to reconstruct former landscapes.
Farm Life
Farm archaeology gives us access to the practical realities of life.
People had to manage livestock, cultivate crops, repair buildings, process food, maintain tools, and respond to weather.
On an island such as Eday, farming was also inseparable from the sea.
Fishing and marine resources provided important supplements to agricultural production.
Significance
Redland's importance lies in showing that archaeology is not only about monumental structures.
The history of ordinary agricultural communities is equally important.
Farm mounds can preserve evidence of the people who maintained the landscape generation after generation.
