Gail's first lecture at Megalithomania 2021 explored an on-going study of free-standing Bronze Age megalithic monuments across areas of western Scotland, both on islands and the mainland. The original project was designed to unearth the locational choices of their builders, the reasons behind these choices and what these reveal about the belief systems of these societies. Through the construction of stone, water, the land, the cremated dead and specific astronomical phenomena, the builders of monuments mirrored their cosmological ideologies and created dramatic visual events in time at particular periods during the solar and lunar years. These visual events were played out using spectacular shows based on light and darkness, and which, by manipulating these, the builders demonstrated that, whilst the Moon was chosen as the object towards which the majority of standing stones were aligned, the significance of the Sun was clearly shown to be the connection to life, and its lack, to death. Thus we can see, for the creators of the standing stone monuments of western Scotland, that these sites embody the fundamental knowledge of existence.
Gail Higginbottom is a landscape archaeologist, cultural heritage manager and theorist whose current areas of archaeological research involve monuments, geographical and cultural landscapes, depositional behaviour and belief systems. She has acted as an international cultural heritage adviser on indigenous to historic cultural places, the existing geographical coverage of her specialist research is Europe and the study of ancient and prehistoric cultures. Major scientific investigations include the application and development of databases, geographical information systems (GIS) as well as the co-development and application of statistics. Methodological enhancement activities revolve around digital archaeology and the theoretical considerations and actual applications of these. These include the use of 3D landscape software (in-house development), use of drones and photogrammetry, and the use of tablets in the field loaded with specialist data and software to enable field observations of the night and day sky and landscape together as seen by past peoples. Gail's research program also incorporates working with ideas about materiality and human experience and the research program has a connection to many of the philosophical traditions currently used in cultural and ecological anthropology today.
Lecture and Q & A recorded at the Megalithomania Online Conference 2021: http://www.megalithomania.co.uk/speakersnew.html.
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