However, while modern historians and archaeologists are often interested in complex social issues, travellers are concerned for the condition of the roads, nature of the food, and quality of the beds. But explorers of all generations have always been aware of the importance of their reportage as substitute for the actual experience for their readers, and then as now, writers took this responsibility seriously, none more so than Samuel Johnson [left], who visited Scotland in 1773 with his Scottish companion, James Boswell, publishing his account, the Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland , two years later. Boswell’s own A Tour to the Hebrides appeared in 1786. Johnson was an author, critic, and, more importantly, compiler of the first proper English dictionary, and has long been an major source of quotations:
As an archaeologist taking the long view, I blame farming; bad move -- never should have started agriculture. Once you leave Eden, it’s a whole different ball game: You become dependent on agriculture and producing food by changing and modifying the environment.
When the first Neolithic farmer arrived, Scotland was fairly thickly wooded, the Caledonian forest covering perhaps 80% of the landmass, some 1.5 million ha. The main tree species was Scots pine, with birches, rowan, alder, willows, and bird cherry, and an under-storey of smaller trees and shrubs, principally juniper, aspen, holly, and hazel. Importantly, from a builder’s point of view, there is some oak (Quercus petracea), but it is not as common as further south, pine being an inferior substitute as a structural timber.
This vast forest was the principle host of biodiversity, storing water nutrients, stabilising the soil, and bringing shelter to the environment. It originally had wide range of animal life including beavers, wild boar, wolves, elks, aurochs, and bears, all of which had been hunted to extinction by the time of Johnson’s visit, along with many other species such as the capercaillie, a large form of grouse, subsequently reintroduced.
For all but the most recent centuries, material culture was largely fabricated from wood. In addition, woodland provided the majority of the fuel for cooking, heating and industrial processes, as well as meat, foodstuffs, forage, and materials like furs. As more and more of the forest was cleared, its products became increasingly rare and valuable, further stimulating its destruction. However, most of Europe had once been forest, and despite extensive clearance, managed to maintain the supply of woodland products by careful management and investment in the remaining areas. The shortfall in timber was made up by importing timber from the Baltic and Scandinavia, at great cost to the economy of Scotland.
“There are two seasons in Scotland: June and winter.” Billy Connolly
“Once or twice a year, great numbers of [highlanders] get together and make a descent into the lowlands, where they plunder the inhabitants, and so return back and disperse themselves. And this they are apt to do in the profoundest peace, it being not only natural to them to delight in rapine, but they do it on a kind of principle, and in conformity to the prejudice they continually have to the lowlanders, who they generally take for so many enemies”
"The houses of their quality are high and strong, and appear more like castles, made of thick stone, with iron bars before their windows. Yet now they begin to have better buildings, and to be very modish both in the fabric and furniture, though they want their gardens, which are the beauty and pride of our English seats.“
"The vulgar houses, and what are seen in the villages are low and feeble. Their walls are made of a few stones jumbled together without mortar to cement them, on which they set up pieces of wood meeting at the top, ridge fashion, but so ordered that their is neither sightliness nor strength, and it does not cost much more time to erect such a cottage than to pull it down".
Morer was also surprised by the widespread use of turf for roofing:
"They cover these houses with turf of an inch thick, and in the shape of larger tiles, which they fasten with wooden pins, and renew as often as there is occasion; and that is very frequently done. ... It was matter of wonder at first that so great a corn-country as Scotland is should not be able to afford 'em straw enough to thatch the houses: But calling to mind their want of hay, which makes 'em employ the straw in feeding their horses as well as foddering their other cattle, . . . “
The built environment of Scotland in the 17th and 18th centuries was a product of a society in which human aggression was an all-important factor, and this ultimately conditioned its form and materials.
What also struck visitors in the 17th and 18th Centuries was the lack of progress in agriculture and the built environment compared to England. There was even a noticeable a lack of field boundaries and hedges. On one level, the core of this problem was the instability caused by Highland over-population, and some frankly rather arcane and disturbing attitudes to other people’s property and right to life. However, the common man was not to blame for lack of proper investment and the deforestation of Scotland; it was the clan chiefs who had the ultimate power over these resources, and they also chose to use their military levy in the wars that impeded the development of a normal economy.