The formation of two sediment types in Orkney is elucidated. Both are demonstrated to be the result of anthropogenic sedimentary processes, deep top soils the result of arable activity, farm mounds the result of habitation activity. Deep top soils commenced formation c 1200 AD either as a spontaneous innovation due to increasing population pressure or as a new agricultural technique introduced with monastic settlement. Cessation of deep top soil formation is attributed to the 1800s agricultural improvements when new forms of land fertilizer were introduced. The land use associated with deep top soil formation was the tunmal, the most intensively cultivated part of the early township. The materials used to sustain this intensive cultivation resulted in deep top soil formation. These materials were dominantly turf from the hill land and grazing land together with variable quantities of animal manure and a little seaweed. Deep top soils are located in West Mainland on naturally less fertile soils, where seaweed was in short supply and where population density was relatively high. Farm mound formation commenced over a thousand year period, between the Iron Age and late Norse period. The major impetus to farm mound formation was the Norse settlement commencing c 800 AD. Two farm mounds examined in detail indicate a mound core was deposited using primarily a turf and manure mixture. At one site this alleviated a flooding hazard. The core was then covered with turves and peat, creating a living surface upon which pathways and fertilized garden plots are evident. In the latter stages of farm mound formation their use was as a midden where toft wastes, dominantly ash, were deposited. Farm mounds are restrictedin their distribution to Sanday and North Ronaldsay where early population levels were greatest and where ample seaweed was available for land fertilization instead of toft wastes.

During the recent exponential rise in the use of alternative medicines (AM) in the West and increasing integration into the health service, little research has been done on AM in the context in which it is practised, or over time to look at changing belief systems. This thesis provides an anthropologically informed analysis of one alternative therapy in depth - homeopathy- explored from the multiple perspectives of biomedical and lay homeopaths, users and students of homeopathy. The ethnography comprised 18 months participant observation in 4 settings in south London: the surgery of a homeopathic GP; a homeopathy adult education class; a vaccination support group; and a low cost homeopathy clinic for victims of crime. The fieldwork is contextualised by a critique of the existing research on users of AM; a review of the history and politics of integration of AM and a review of anthropological conceptions of the body and health. Analysis of the empirical data reveals different groups of users of homeopathy with differing beliefs around health, healing and the body. 'Pragmatic users' had a normative biomedical view of health. 'Committed users' moved away from the normative biomedical position and were enculturated into a different view of health and the body through interaction with lay homeopaths. Inherent in these practitioners' and users' beliefs and practices were a number of oppositions to science-based medicine. Prolonged fieldwork enabled the changing views of users to be charted as they moved from biomedical to alternative views. The medical homeopath stayed allied to many biomedical beliefs about the body and health, partly as a result of general practice constraints of time, colleagues and training. Tensions between his biomedical and homeopathic practice lead to paradoxical behaviours that confused his patients. These findings problematise the notion of integration, of trying to incorporate two opposing ideologies into one system. Implications for alternative medicine more widely are discussed.