Medieval buildings and environmental change: chronology,ecology and political administration at Castle Sween, Knapdale
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Medieval buildings and environmental change: chronology, ecology and political administration at Castle Sween, Knapdale Mark Thacker 1 Received: 6 March 2020 / Accepted: 15 July 2020 / Published online: 17 September 2020 # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract This paper presents results from an integrated programme of landscape, buildings and materials analysis undertaken at Castle Sween under the aegis of the Scottish Medieval Castles & Chapels C14 Project (SMCCCP). A suite of petrographic, archaeobotanical and radiocarbon analyses are employed to present the first independent dating evidence relating to the construction of three phases of the castle complex, including a primary phase curtain-walled enclosure widely regarded as mainland Scotland’s earliest surviving medieval masonry castle. This data is generally consistent with previous interpretations of the building’s stratigraphy and architectural style, although an earlier than expected determination for the northeast tower draws further attention the contrasting character of this particular structure. Archaeobotanical analysis of the largest assemblage of mortar-entrapped relict limekiln fuel fragments undertaken by the project, thus far, also hints at wider changes in the surrounding environment. Correlating this buildings evidence with palynological and other data associated with the political, vegetational and climate history of the surrounding lordship, and across Argyll more widely, is beginning to align the construction of Castle Sween with broader ecological processes from which the surrounding environment has emerged. Keywords Castle . Climate . Environment . Medieval . Radiocarbon . Vegetation
Introduction The curtain-walled enclosure at Castle Sween is widely regarded as the earliest surviving medieval masonry castle in mainland Scotland (Fig. 1). The initial construction of this building in the late twelfth to early thirteenth century, therefore, represents a moment of huge significance for the country’s social and architectural history, whilst evidence for a further four masonry phases and occupation up to the midseventeenth century attests to the continued importance of the site throughout the medieval period and beyond. Historical discourse surrounding the region within which Castle Sween is situated, however, has charted changes in the area’s medieval political geography which have international reach; with this western fringe of mainland Scotland framed as Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-020-01162-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Mark Thacker [email protected] 1
University of Stirling, 27 Upper Carloway, Isle of Lewis, Scotland
a battle ground between the competing interests of the Scottish, Norwegian and English Crowns in the eleventh to fourteenth centuries, mediated by powerful regional lordships which retained close political and cultural ties with nearby Ireland throughout (Brown 2004, 255). On an even wider
