Archaeology and Historic Landscape

Assessment should include scheduled monuments and listed buildings, but also undesignated sites, locally important structures, historic roads, field systems, settlement remains, industrial and agricultural features, landscape character, views and community memory.

A place does not become historically unimportant because it has never been formally designated.

Useful starting points include the Aberdeenshire Historic Environment Record, Historic Environment Scotland Portal, PastMap, historic Ordnance Survey maps, estate plans and aerial photography.

Ask whether the developer obtained professional HER information from the Archaeology Service rather than relying only on the public map.

Former farm and field names, drove roads, fords, previous bridges, mills, lades, wells, ruined buildings, removed walls, repeated finds, unusual mounds, wartime features and family memory can all trigger useful questions.

Separate what a person saw directly from what was heard or remembered.

Names can preserve evidence of land use, water, routes, settlement, industry, ownership and worship. A name is not proof of a site, but it may justify further research.

Keep the source: old map, deed, directory, publication or oral account.

Look for hollow ways, drove roads, estate tracks, former railway alignments, fords, bridge approaches, milestones, culverts, steadings, cottages, kilns, mills, rig-and-furrow, banks, dykes, hedges and estate planting.

A modern open field may still contain shallow foundations or earlier cultivation patterns.

Heritage harm is not limited to physical destruction. Consider landform, skyline, river valleys, approach routes, darkness, tranquillity, designed planting, historic ownership and visual relationships between places.

Ask whether winter views, cumulative infrastructure, overhead lines, substations, lighting and access works were assessed together.

Include compounds, parking, soil storage, crane pads, haul roads, temporary bridges, road widening, drainage ponds, cable trenches, pylon foundations, substations, fencing, borrow pits and off-site mitigation.

Temporary works can permanently remove archaeological evidence.

Depending on risk, work may include documentary research, map regression, walkover, geophysics, fieldwalking, trial trenches, building recording, setting assessment and community engagement.

Ask whether the Council Archaeology Service agreed the scope and whether post-consent work could still lead to meaningful redesign.

The preferred order is to understand, avoid, reduce harm, preserve significant remains where appropriate, and record only where loss cannot reasonably be avoided.

“Preservation by record” should not become the first answer to a site or route that could still be changed.

From a safe lawful position, take a wide context photograph, a medium view and a closer image without touching the feature. Record date, direction, approximate size, land use and whether it appears on a map.

Do not climb, scrape, clean, lift or rearrange stones or structures.

Potentially significant portable archaeological finds in Scotland must be reported through Treasure Trove. Record the findspot, do not clean the object and keep items and locations labelled.

If objects remain together in the ground, leave them in place and contact Treasure Trove or the Council archaeologist promptly. Possible human remains must be left untouched and reported to Police Scotland.

A written procedure should state who stops work, secures the area, contacts the archaeologist, records the find, handles human remains, reports Treasure Trove material and decides when work can restart.

It should apply to all contractors, and significant discoveries must be capable of triggering redesign.