Thesis--Columbia University. / Vita. Bibliography: p. [140]-147.

This is an interdisciplinary arts practice based PhD that incorporates fieldwork into its exploration of Abernethy Forest in Cairngorms National Park, and Culbin Forest in Morayshire, Scotland. The thesis explores how a contemporary arts practice can articulate a place’s multi-layered complexities and how processes of coming to know influence and impact on the kinds of artworks created. This way of working incorporates an innovative approach that draws on geographical, anthropological, historical and ecological sources, and includes the synthesis of a contemporary arts practice with an ethnographic element - more specifically participant observation, with foresters, ecologists and others - as a mode of gathering. Description and examination of encounters in the field give context to the artwork and provide additional knowledge that lends insight into management practices and the knowledge that these workers possess. The research constitutes an original contribution to investigations of the forests of Culbin and Abernethy and correspondingly innovative outputs. This research proposes that a contemporary arts practice can articulate and communicate aspects and elements of place in ways that offer insights to artists, geographers, anthropologists and others. Central to this is the idea that places are multi-layered, everchanging, embodied, active and containing complex ecological, sensorial and physical histories and presences. Communicating these understandings requires a multi-faceted way of working and multi-modal ways of articulation in recognition of place as an experiential field of investigation. The art produced forms a non-linear, multi-stranded body of work that emphasises the benefits of multiple formats within an arts practice. The thesis enhances and further complicates conceptualisations of place that in geography and anthropology are often restricted to academic writing and demonstrates how artists and others can usefully enlarge and expand the ways in which places can be articulated and rendered.

The subject of this study is attitudes towards Gaelic Scotland to be found in Lowland Scottish historiography of the late fourteenth to the late sixteenth century; the authors examined were John of Fordun, Andrew Wyntoun, Walter Bower, John Mair, Hector Boece, John Leslie and George Buchanan. In the first part of the thesis the historical works were examined with respect to the attitude of each individual author towards the Highlanders of his own time. It was found that the earlier authors - i.e. Fordun, Wyntoun, Bower and Mair - mirror anti-Highland feeling and prejudice that were widespread in their own Lowland surroundings. They further the image of the Highlander as a savage. The later authors, by contrast, look upon their Gaelic contemporaries from a humanistic, or rather, 'primitivistic', point of view: to them the Gaelic Scots with their simple way of life represent the virtuous and noble customs and traditions of the Scottish forefathers. The second part of the thesis was concerned with the historians' presentation of Gaelic kings and kingship. Special attention was paid to their understanding of the Gaelic succession law; here, a lack of comprehension could be noted among the authors, which led to a distorted presentation of the reigns and characters of a number of Gaelic kings of tenth- and eleventh-century Scotland. In this historical part, no substantial difference in presentation could be found between the earlier and the sixteenth-century authors, mainly because the latter did not carry out any historical research of their own. In the case of Fordun, Wyntoun, Bower and Mair, perceptions of Gaelic Scotland are rooted in the traditional negative attitudes of their own times and surroundings; this corresponds to a lack of understanding of aspects of the Gaelic element in Scottish history. The humanist historians, on the other hand, propose a view of Gaelic Scotland which is in opposition to the views of their own Lowland contemporaries, and which they do not back up in their presentations of Scottish history.

Detailed snow surveys were carried out in the Allt a Mharcaidh catchment on the western edge of the Cairngorm mountains during the winters of 1985/86,1986/87 and 1988/89. Snowpack data collected included depth, density, areal extent and water equivalent. From these data it was possible to determine seasonal patterns in snowpack behaviour and relate these to the initial snowpack water equivalent volume and timing of the snow accumulation and ablation. Using meteorological and flow data collected in the Mharcaidh by the Institute of Hydrology as part of the SWAP project simple linear regression relationships were determined. These indicated that the availability of detailed meteorological data did not improve the ability to simulate observed flow and that a successful regression could be established using simple and readily available data. Using this data temperature index models were developed and tested on the Mharcaidh. These showed that the mean daily temperature provided a better index of melt than more complex indices and that simple changes regarding the addition of a freezing level hindered the model performance despite being closer to reality than other assumptions made in the model. This suggested that the degree of complexity in the model has to be similar for all operations to obtain optimum results; having one particularly complex sub-model reduces the performance of the others. Two other types were tested on the Mharcaidh based on the layered structure developed by Martinec (1975) and Anderson's (1968) method using temperature and windspeed as an index to the energy changes at the snowpack boundary during rain-on--snow events. These again show that simple methods using readily available data can produce acceptable results and that increasing the complexity of the model does not produce a similar increase in performance. The three different models were then run on different datasets for different catchments and years. The dependence of Anderson's method on good quality data is highlighted suggesting that it is not as widely applicable as the other models. The level of performance for all models is related to the extent and depth of the snowpack indicating that further improvements may be necessary to the hydrological components of the model rather than the melt sub-model itself. The models were tested in simulated real time conditions on one dataset and, following this, guidelines for use in real time to predict snowmelt runoff are given.

Conditions of 8kb and 800°C are estimated for sillimanite K feldspar bearing metapelites and garnet-clinopyroxene bearing amnphibolites in Glen Muick. These conditions are inconsistent with the simultaneous nearby presence of equilibrium between andalusite and kyanite. Andalusite in the Glen Muick area is late. The sillimanite zone may have been in part primary. There is a transition without major structural break between Tay Nappe flat belt and the "Banff Nappe". A dataset has been derived for phases in the system KCMASHCO₂. The MHSRK equation of Kerrick and Jacobs (1981) has been used to extract data from mixed devolatilisation equilibria. Heats of formation are in agreement with calorimetrically determined values. Phlogopite equilibria calculated using disordered phlogopite data seem most appropriate to natural metapelite assemblages. Variations in pressure and temperature have been constrained across the Dalradian using various calibrated reactions. Temperatures vary from about 500°C in the low kyanite zone to 800°C in the sillimanite-K feldspar zone and pressures vary from 4kb to 10kb. Pressure estimates are justified on the basis that they are consistent with the aluminosilicate phase diagram. Rocks from the Central Highlands to Glen Clova underwent a decrease in pressure during evolution through peak metamorphic conditions. Amphibolites from the southern Moines show evidence of a former eclogitic assemblage of early Grampian age or earlier. High temperature regional metamorphic rocks lie at high structural levels and are are suggested to be an allochthonous unit, the Banff Nappe of Grampian age. The western margin of the Banff Nappe is marked by a temperature maximum to the immediate east, sharp thermal transitions, a train of metabasites and a high strain zone. It is suggested that emplacement of a Banff Nappe resulted in the deformation and metamorphism of structurally lower rocks.

Thesis (M.A.) -- University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 2006. / Title from title page screen (viewed on Feb. 8, 2007). Thesis advisor: Thomas Haddox. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

This thesis provides detailed studies of settlement on four Faroese islands and in four districts of Shetland in order to isolate and explain differences and similarities between the two island groups. These studies examine topography, place-names, relationships with previous settlements, church distribution, settlement expansion, inter-relationship of settlements and land assessments. The range of sources and methods are set out in the Introduction. The first Regional Study presents two districts of Western Norway, Fjaler and Gaular, which are discussed to illustrate some of the major trends of settlement in the homeland. Detailed studies are then made of settlements on the four Faroese islands of Fugloy, Streymoy, Sandoy and Suduroy and in the four Shetland districts of Fetlar, Delting, Walls and Sandness, and Tingwall. A section arranged thematically follows, bringing together results from the Regional Studies and referring more generally to the whole of Shetland and Faroe. This section examines three themes: firstly, the relationship between the Norse settlers and pre-Norse populations; secondly, the development of the Scattalds and bygdir; -and thirdly, naming patterns. Despite very great differences in the extent of settlement prior to the arrival of the Norse in Faroe and Shetland, primary settlement patterns are essentially similar. The Scattalds and bygdir represent comparable settlement districts and reflect similar agricultural requirements and responses to the landscape while primary settlement sites in both island groups generally feature good harbours and extensive cultivable land with topographical names descriptive of their coastal location. Secondary settlement expansion takes different forms in Faroe and Shetland, however, and this is reflected in nomenclature, in particular the absence of the habitative elements stadir, bolstadr and setr from Faroe. It is concluded that the absence or presence of habitative place-name elements is dependent on the nature of settlement expansion.

Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Glasgow, 2007. / Ph.D. thesis submitted to the Department of Economic and Social History, Faculty of Law, Business and Social Sciences, University of Glasgow, 2007. Includes bibliographical references. Print copy also available.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Central Florida, 2010. / Adviser: Peter Larson. Includes bibliographical references (p. 95-100).

This thesis examines the politics of local, governance in the Scottish Highlands, taking the Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) network - made up of a central core and 10 Local Enterprise Companies (LECs) - as its institutional focus. It synthesises regulationist approaches and neo-Marxist state theory to explain LECs as part of a broader process of re-regulation under consecutive Conservative governments. LECs are unelected, business-led agencies operating at the local level. The political discourse through which LECs were established and promoted created expectations of local autonomy among business representatives that clashed with the centralising tendencies of Thatcherism. The thesis examines how the resultant tension between local initiative and central control has been worked out within the HIE network. It relies on data collected from seventy semi-structured interviews with representatives of HIE, LECs, local authorities, businesses and community groups. The initial chapters introduce the research and consider key methodological issues, set out the theoretical framework, and review the practices of the Highlands and Islands Development Board (HIDB, HIE's successor). The thesis then explores the key tension between local initiative and central control, explaining how it has been mediated and resolved through routine institutional practices. It also examines HIE-LECs relations with other key agencies, notably local authorities, through selected examples of multi-agency partnerships and assesses LECs' local accountability and representativeness. Finally, a concluding chapter sets out the main findings and considers their implications. While key managerial 'technologies' such as targeting, audit and financial controls allow central government to monitor and steer the HIE network, the thesis argues that the authoritative resources of the HIE core - grounded in the combination of local knowledge and technical expertise inherited from the HIDB - enables it to adapt key aspects of the operating regime to its own purposes. Local autonomy is limited by the relative centralisation of the Network, and LECs operate in a system of structured flexibility in which their scope to adapt policy to local conditions is constrained by state rules and procedures. In emphasising that local autonomy is limited by hierarchical mechanisms of control, the thesis argues that local governance in the Scottish Highlands continues to be underpinned by government. It also points to the limits of the regulation approach and neo-Marxist state theory as theoretical perspectives, suggesting that neo-Foucauldian writings on govemmentality are useful in providing stronger analytical purchase on the specific mechanisms and procedures through which state regulation is practised.