A Note on Neolithic Settlement in the Clyde Region of Scotland

In 1934 Professor V. Gordon Childe wrote an important paper entitled ‘Neolithic Settlement in the West of Scotland’ (Childe, 1934), in which he sought to correlate the distribution of what are now known as Clyde chambered cairns (Scott, 1969a) with the incidence of the comparatively scarce light and well drained soils of the predominantly mountainous region in which the cairns are found. He visualized such soils as restricted to raised beach platforms, apparently having the so-called 25-foot beach in mind, and to alluvial gravels (1934, 22). He considered that such soils would have been more easily cultivated by primitive methods than heavier soils, and would indeed for that reason have been deliberately sought by incoming Neolithic settlers (1934, 23). He assumed that tombs would have been erected on slopes immediately adjacent to settlements (1934, 23), and consequently that such tombs could today be taken as indicators of settlement in the absence of other evidence

Alluvial soils · Alluvium · Ancient history · Archaeology · Geography · Human settlement · Settlement (finance · Archaeological Research and Protection · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies · Geology · History · Maritime and Coastal Archaeology · Paleontology

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• The Chambered Cairn at Beacharra, Kintyre, Argyll

  Open Access•J G Scott•Proceedings of the Prehistoric…•1964

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