EHG6432 - Walkover and measured surveys - Dalnamain township, Strath Carnaig

Walkover and measured surveys were undertaken by M Marshall and A Coombs of NoSAS in 2019-20 of the Dalnamain township, Strath Carnaig, Sutherland for the Sutherland Longhouse Project, a community engagement project hosted by Historylinks Museum, Dornoch which ran from August 2018 to March 2020. The longhouse of the project was situated within the Dalnamain settlement. The work also included historical research by M Bangor Jones undertaken to understand the context of the archaeology of the site. Dalnamain was chosen for the Sutherland Longhouse Project because it was easily accessed by all but the most incapacitated people, and the remains are relatively unchanged since the site was cleared of its ten tenants around 1813. The settlement had many of the features typical of other cleared settlements and, as such, was an opportunity for the Project to understand and show how society in Sutherland lived and worked between the 1700s and early 1800s. The main purpose of the Project was to engage local people who would like to become more aware of their local heritage and to share their knowledge with others. The many workshops run by Historylinks Museum throughout the Project enabled people to connect with the skills that would have been part of everyday life in the Dalnamain community and made the scant visible remains on the ground more meaningful. The survey of the settlement expanded the archaeological record of the site, adding several new features. Frequent visits to the site also allowed further development of an understanding of the changes that took place in agriculture during the history of the site. The site was walked over on several occasions, and all structures found were recorded with a handheld gps. There was a compass and paced plan created, and a drone flight over the site. The individual features were generally measured by pacing and are all approximate. Apart from some minimal probing into the ground to confirm the presence of stones where the structures were ephemeral, there was no removal of the ground to reveal the features. <1>