Found Architecture: Places Becoming Monuments in Northern Britain

Twentieth century fieldwork in Britain had many emphases but one of the most influential was the identification and classification of different types of prehistoric monuments. It was not always easy to distinguish between ruined structures left by ancient people and geological formations that often resembled them. The problem was most severe in highland regions. This distinction was based on the contrast in Western thought between nature and culture.

New work in Scotland and Northern England has weakened this contrast. Bona fide monuments could develop from topographical features that gained a special significance in peoples’ lives, and glacial mounds and rock outcrops might have been mistaken for the remains of older structures – sometimes those connections were celebrated in architectural form. There was ‘found architecture’ in the past just as modern artists have used ‘found objects’.

The lecture will illustrate these points drawing on a series of recent excavations.