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PALaEoScot

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PALaEoScot

Although the evidence for human life in Ice Age Scotland is currently sparse and under-researched, the recent discovery of sites like Howburn Farm is putting the Scottish Palaeolithic on the map. In contrast, the palaeoclimate and palaeoenvironmental data from the Late Glacial period is rich, and palaeontological remains from Scotland's bone caves hold great potential to better understand prehistoric animal life at the extreme edge of north-west Europe during the Late Pleistocene.

Starting in 2023, the ERC-selected/UKRI-funded PALaEoScot project, focuses on examining the history of research into Scotland's deeper past and also generating new evidence for Palaeolithic life in Scotland, the Late Pleistocene environment, and the animals that shared that world.

The PALaEoScot team and collaborators are employing cutting-edge biomolecular and isotopic analyses to reconstruct Scotland's Late Pleistocene living landscapes and - using computational modelling to integrate palaeo -environmental, - ecological and archaeological data - will explore the constraints and potentials of contemporary human dispersals. PALaEoScot will illuminate human and animal life in north-west Europe at the end of the Last Ice Age and create new ways of approaching low visibility archaeology.

Project Objectives

The specific objectives of PALaEoScot are to:

  1. Interrogate the history of research into Scotland's deeper human past compared to other parts of Britain and north-west Europe.
  2. Bring together the current archaeological evidence and conduct new, targeted and advanced study of selected field sites and museum collections.
  3. Assess Scotland's changing faunal resources in the Late Glacial period through the study of palaeontological (animal bone) remains and genetic analyses of sediment samples from selected field sites.
  4. Apply isotopic (chemical) analyses to Scotland's Late Pleistocene palaeontological remains, including likely subsistence species, to reconstruct ancient foodwebs and potential palaeomigratory routes.
  5. Use computational modelling to integrate palaeo-environmental, -ecological, and archaeological data and identify diachronic constraints and potentials of human habitation in Late Glacial Scotland, likely focus-areas for activity and potential dispersal routes.
Our Team

In Aberdeen, our core team includes:

The following NERC/QUADRAT-funded PhD students contribute to our wider research focus on Late Pleistocene Scotland, Ireland and northern Europe:

Project Partners and Funding

PALaEoScot is an ERC-selected, UKRI-funded project hosted within the University of Aberdeen archaeology department.

Our project includes a large number of related researchers and key collaborators, including:

  • Dr Tim Lawson
  • Dr Andrew Kitchener and NMS
  • Dr Kerry Sayle
Publications

Kitchener AC, and Britton K. in press. The Bears of Scotland. Annales Zoologici Fennici.

Outreach

Come back soon to see our future outreach plans.