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Lookup NU author(s): Professor Annie TindleyORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Scotland found itself at the heart of Europe’s Romantic movement in the early nineteenth century, a trend driven by environmental and cultural changes and which has been surprisingly durable. At the same time, radical processes of agricultural and landscape change, rooted in powerful legal privileges held by landowners, led to a wholesale increase of sheep and deer and to the devastation of both the environment and traditional communities and their way of life, especially starkly in the Gàidhealtachd. As it became a global hotspot for commercial sport amongst a global plutocratic elite, the resulting devastation imposed on the landscape (described by Frank Fraser Darling as a ‘man-made desert’ by the 1940s) is only recently being better understood. New approaches are being instituted to reverse that damage, such as rewilding, that are themselves controversial and subject to criticism for being undemocratic and ignoring the expertise and needs of local communities once again. This chapter will consider the motivations behind and responses to those changes from landscape, ecological and community perspectives, and understand the role of resistance and protest embedded within those processes. It will also draw conclusions as to how resilience and adaptation in the historical context can underpin future thinking around land use, community empowerment and democratisation of decision-making in the context of a climate crisis.
Author(s): Tindley A
Editor(s): Lekakis, S; Fairclough G; Meier T; Turner S
Publication type: Book Chapter
Publication status: Published
Book Title: Towards an Archaeology of Devastation: Breaking/Replacing the People-Place Connection in Landscape
Year: 2026
Pages: 115-139
Print publication date: 26/03/2026
Online publication date: 26/03/2026
Acceptance date: 04/10/2024
Publisher: heiBOOKS
Place Published: Heidelberg
URL: https://doi.org/10.11588/heibooks.1613.c24603
DOI: 10.11588/heibooks.1613.c24603
Notes: 9783911056427 ebook ISBN.
Library holdings: Search Newcastle University Library for this item
ISBN: 9783911056434
