The Hebridean World: Its Human Ecology Through Time (Historical Geography and Geosciences)

Preface
Contents
About the Author
Abbreviations
List of Figures
List of Plates
1 The Hebrides: Their Physical Endowment
	1.1	The Hebrides: Their Geological Setting
	1.2	Changes in Sea Level
	1.3	The Formation of the Machair and Its Instabilities
	1.4	The Development of Peat Cover
	1.5	Were the Hebrides Once a Wooded Landscape?
	Bibliography
2 How the Earliest Human Communities Adapted to Their Setting
	2.1	The Earliest Hebrideans
	Bibliography
3 A Fusion of Cultures: The Picts, Scots and Norse
	3.1	The Indigenous Picts
	3.2	The Emergence of the Scotti
	3.3	The Norse Imprint
	Bibliography
4 How Land Was Occupied Before Crofting
	4.1	How Land Was Assessed and Its Meaning
	4.2	When Were Land Assessments First Introduced?
	4.3	How Land Was Set
	4.4	How Were Runrig Touns Laid Out on the Ground?
	Bibliography
5 How the Land Was Farmed Before Crofting
	5.1	Rents and the Field Economy of Touns
	5.2	Assessments, Rents and Patterns of Husbandry
	5.3	The Anomaly of Enclosures: Pre-runrig Survivals?
	5.4	The Forces of Change
	Bibliography
6 Landscapes of Summer: The Shielings
	Bibliography
7 The Inter Tidal and Beyond: The Harvest of Sea and Shore
	7.1	Fishing
	7.2	Shell-Food
	7.3	Strandings, Haul-Outs, Driftwood and Wrecks
	7.4	Fowling and Egg Collecting
	7.5	Seaweed and Kelp Making
	Bibliography
8 The Harvesting and Processing of Grain
	Bibliography
9 Survival on the Margins
	9.1	The Climate-Based Risks Facing the Hebridean
	9.2	The Risks from Offshore
	9.3	Strategies of Survival
	9.4	How the Potato Changed the Ecology of Output
	9.5	Environmental Impacts and Land Degradation
	Bibliography
10 Crofting: An Uncompromising Adaptation
	10.1	A Chronology of the Croft
	10.2	The Birth of the Crofting Township
	10.3	The Spread of the Crofting Township
	10.4	How the Crofting Township Changed
	10.5	Crofting After the Great Famine
	Bibliography
11 The Clearances for Sheep and Deer
	11.1	The Clearances for Sheep
	11.2	The Reinvention of the Sporting Estate
	Bibliography
12 Hebridean Housing and Settlement
	12.1	Beyond the Norse
	12.2	Traditional Housing in a Time of Change
	12.3	Housing as a Cyclical Process
	12.4	Changes in Scale and Plan?
	12.5	Changes in the Raw Materials of House Construction
	12.6	Byres and Beyond
	12.7	The Blackhouse
	12.8	The Problem of Creaga
	12.9	Housing and Social Ranking
	12.10	Housing in Its Context
	Bibliography
13 Epilogue
	13.1	Highland Farming Touns Before Crofting: A World Lost in Time?
	13.2	The Hebridean Farming Toun: An Open or Closed Ecosystem?
	Bibliography
Glossary