Times of change From country to industry:
the Dark Ages to the Industrial Revolution

From 1290 years ago, around AD 670 (46 cm), the landscape was becoming more and more familiar. More trees disappeared as farm life began to dominate the countryside where animals grazed around ripening barley fields and smoke rose from heathland fires which probably helped keep the heather young and tender for the animals to graze on. Smoke probably also curled from the fires in homes and workshops.

This was a time of change, not only around Greenhead Moss: written records became more common during the early historic period, sometimes called the Dark Ages, although the surviving manuscripts are not widespread. Christianity was also spreading during this time. The monastery on Iona provides us with one of the rare early historic manuscripts, the beautifully illustrated or illuminated Book of Kells.

From these manuscripts we have some idea of tribal and political groups which gradually developed from the Iron Age tribes. This includes the Britons in Clydesdale and south-west Scotland, the Gododdin in the south-east, and the Picts north of the central Lowlands. Gaels from Ulster spread across into Argyll, which became known as the Kingdom of Dalriada by the mid-sixth century. The fort at Dunadd is one of their early strongholds. These groups gradually amalgamated into modern Scots around AD 900.

With so many political, social and economic changes, pollen records only tell us part of the story, so written records are very useful for understanding how people lived in the past.

More about early Scottish history>
www.scotshistory.org/index.asp
www.scran.ac.uk/
www.bbc.co.uk/history

What about the bog: was it still a quiet little wild haven, with just grazing animals to disturb the peace?

Today it is easy to see how much people have changed the simple domed raised moss that formed more than 10000 years ago. Peat is a useful source of fuel, so it may have been cut for a long time, especially as wood became scarcer. There is archaeological evidence for peat fuel from Orkney as far back as the Neolithic – the time of the earliest farmers (6000-4500 years ago), probably because trees were scarce. Peat ash and charred peat fragments have been found in agricultural soils around farms there. These were probably recycled from hearths and buildings to soils as organic fertiliser: nothing was wasted.

Small-scale peat cutting is not likely to have affected the bog much, but after 3470 years ago (110 cm) parts of the peat record at Greenhead Moss are probably missing because the bog was being exploited more and more extensively. For example, there is a sudden big change in the pollen record around 23 cm. Intense, frequent fires seem to have let heather, grasses and heath take over from sedges. Above this level, there are more weeds – dock, nettles, wormwood and other plants that thrive on disturbed, broken ground.  All of this suggests much more disturbance on the Moss than any of the earlier changes.

The radiocarbon dating evidence suggests that this happened around 650 years ago, at about AD 1300, but the change is so abrupt that we may actually be missing a bit of the peat record immediately before this big ecological change because of peat cutting. This would make the start of intensive peat cutting later and this is a good example of where documentary records and old maps can help us to interpret the pollen evidence.

We know that industrial-scale peat cutting was established from the end of the nineteenth century: the Industrial Revolution had arrived! Although it is difficult to say when this started, it certainly had a big effect on the bog ecosystem - all the relationships that kept the raised moss working and growing. Drains stopped the bog from keeping the watertable high, so the surface was drier and plants that need wet ground could not survive as well. Fires burnt the dry surface peat more easily. As peat dries, it shrinks, and under the microscope you can see that the pollen grains in it have been crumpled and squashed because of pressure from the peat shrinking around them. Industrial-scale peat cutting resulted in the regular grid of uncut peat ‘rides’ which have been made into paths across the Moss.


Peats dries and cracks when its self-sustaining water balance is disturbed.These peat cuttings on North Uist, Outer Hebrides, are still worked by hand using spades, not machines. © SNH

 

INTERNAL LINK to social history and industrial heritage of Greenhead Moss>

Later, open-cast mining took out a big area of peat, 4.5 m thick, from the southern end of the bog and this made the drains more effective at carrying water out of the peat. Trampling on the drying bog surface and enrichment by ash from fires provide ideal conditions for weeds to grow, replacing bog plants. Maybe these fires were deliberate, to clear trees and make it easier to cut, stack and carry away the peat, or maybe some were accidents, where the very dry bog surface went up in flames. We know from historical records that fire was often used to clear away surface vegetation, making it easier to cut the peat.

Photographs taken during Victorian times, from the mid-1800s until the early 1900s, show us how people worked on the moss and what it looked like then.

Parish of Cambusnethan:
www.newmains.demon.co.uk/index.htm

Life in industry: New Lanark World Heritage Site:
www.newlanark.org/

Peat was still being cut in 1932, when a man working on the bog made a startling and gruesome discovery – a body buried in the peat. You can read the original report made on the human remains, the man’s clothes and shoes.

Greenhead Moss bog body: the 1932 report>
www.newmains.demon.co.uk/Peatman.htm

This open, dry bog which we can see from the top of the pollen record looks very different to the scrub-covered peat that was Greenhead Moss before conservation management helped to restore the wetland communities. These changes happened because people stopped using the bog in the same way. After peat cutting and mining stopped, trees invaded the dry bog surface, especially the rides, and a little of the top peat may also have been lost through erosion because it is so dry. Heather and weeds flourished on this dry peat because of frequent fires, both deliberate and accidental.

So the moss returned to a sort of wilderness, but this was nothing like the raised moss that it once was; industry permanently changed the whole balance of the ecosystem – the water cycle, the fire regime, the vegetation. Without help, the peat would just have carried on drying out until it was washed or blown away. This would have gradually eaten into what is left of the bog, which would have lost its special plant and animal communities and this whole story would have disappeared....

INTERNAL LINK to the restoration of Greenhead Moss>

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