The study is an oral history of the work of district nurses in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland from 1940-1974. The main themes that emerged from the study were, the wide scope of the nurses' practice, their significant relationships, and the unique nature of their role. Within the themes were concepts of self sacrifice, resilience and autonomy. The challenges the nurses faced in their daily lives from their surrounding environment and the urgent needs of patients were physically and mentally taxing. There was evidence of their resilience and strength of character when they did not flinch in difficult situations. Yet they described being 'happy at work' and relied on their faith. The study suggests that the service these women provided could be regarded as 'heroic'. The thesis offers an insight into the daily lives of district nurses in a remote part of Scotland which has never been studied before. Most nurses were trained Queen's Nurses which was evidently influential and to some a prestigious qualification.

No

Yes / This paper revisits the series of disarticulated human remains discovered during the 1980s excavations of the Cnip wheelhouse complex in Lewis. Four fragments of human bone, including two worked cranial fragments, were originally dated to the 1st centuries BC/AD based on stratigraphic association. Osteoarchaeological reanalysis and AMS dating now provide a broader cultural context for these remains and indicate that at least one adult cranium was brought to the site more than a thousand years after the death of the individual to whom it had belonged.

Due to escalating carbon-based emissions, anthropogenic climate change is wreaking havoc on the natural and built environment as higher near-surface temperatures cause arctic ice-melt, rising sea levels and unpredictable turbulent weather patterns. The effects are especially devastating to inhabitants living in the water-worlds of developing countries where environmental pressure only exacerbates their vulnerability to oppressive economic policies. As climatic and economic pressures escalate, threats to local resources, living space, safety and security are all reaching a tipping point. Climate refugees may survive, but they will fall victim to displacement, economic insecurity, and socio-cultural destruction. With the current economic system in peril, it is now a matter of urgency that the global community determine ways to modify their behaviour in order to minimize the impact of climate change. This interdisciplinary comparative analysis contributes to the dialogue by turning to environmental history for similar scenarios with contrasting outcomes. It isolates two North Atlantic water-worlds and their inhabitants at an historical juncture when the combination of climatic and economic pressures threatened their survival. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Hebrideans in the Scottish Insular Gàidhealtachd and the Wabanaki in Ketakamigwa were both responding to the harsh conditions of the ‘Little Ice Age.’ While modifying their resource management, settlement patterns, and subsistence behaviours to accommodate climate change, they were simultaneously targeted by foreign opportunists whose practices and perceptions inevitably induced oppressive economic pressure. This critical period in their history serves as the centre of a pendulum that swings back to deglaciation and then forward again to the eighteenth century to examine the relationship between climate change and human behaviour in the North Atlantic. It will be demonstrated that both favourable and deteriorating climate conditions determine resource availability, but how humans manage those resources during feast or famine can determine their collective vulnerability to predators when the climate changes. It is argued that, historically, climate has determined levels of human development and survival on either side of the North Atlantic, regardless of sustainable practices. However, when cultural groups were under extreme environmental and economic pressure, there were additional factors that determined their fate. First, the condition of their native environment and prospect for continuing to inhabit it was partially determined by the level of sustainable practices. And, secondly, the way in which they perceived and treated one another partially determined their endurance. If they avoided internal stratification and self-protectionism by prioritising the needs of the group over that of the individual, they minimised fragmentation, avoided displacement, and maintained their social and culture cohesion.

Traditionally archaeology has referred to the anthropic sediments accumulated around prehistoric settlements with the blanket term ‘midden’. This is now recognised as an inadequate term to describe the complex formation processes and functions represented in these sediments. This thesis reviewed the body of evidence accumulated over the past century of research into Neolithic and Bronze Age settlements on the islands of the Scottish North Atlantic seaboard and extrapolated the many occurrences of ‘midden’. Several contexts emerged for these sediments including interior floors, hearths, exterior occupational surfaces, dumped deposits, building construction materials and abandonment infill. In addition, ‘midden’ is described added to cultivated soils to form fertile anthrosols. The way in which prehistoric communities exploited this material for agriculture and construction has been described through geoarchaeological research which implied that to past communities ‘midden’ was a valuable resource. This led to the formation of a model based upon a human ecodynamics framework to hypothesise sediment formation pathways. Rescue excavation at the Links of Noltland, Westray provided an opportunity to conduct a holistic landscape and fine resolution based study of Neolithic and Bronze Age settlement to test this model. The research incorporated auger survey, archaeological and geoarchaeological excavation, thin section micromorphology and SEM EDX analyses. Sediments identified in literature review and recovered from the field site were described using this toolkit and set within a cultural and environmental context. Results demonstrate that anthropic materials were incorporated into all contexts examined. Discrete burning and maintenance activities were found to have taken place during the gradual accumulation of open-air anthropic sediments whilst incorporation of fuel residues and hearth waste into floors lead to the gradual formation of ‘living floors’ inside structures. An unexpected discovery was evidence of animal penning within late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age settlement and the in situ burning of stabling waste. Three types iv | P a g e of land management strategy which relied upon the input of anthropic sediments were evidenced and the range and extent of anthropic inclusions in the landscape recorded. Spatial interpolation of auger survey data utilised a new sub-surface modelling technique being developed by the British Geological Survey to explore soil stratigraphic relationships in 3D. SEM EDX analysis supported micromorphological analysis providing chemical data for discrete inclusions and assisting in the identification of herbivore dun ash and the Orcadian funerary product ‘cramp’. SEM EDX analysis was also applied to fine organo-mineral material for statistical testing of nutrient loadings across context groups. It was found that anthropic sediments were enriched in macro and intermediate plant nutrients Mg, P, K, S and Ca compared to geological controls, and the application of anthropic material to cultivated soils improved soil fertility for the three observed land management practices. The versatility of anthropic sediments was explored through discussion of context groups based upon the results of this research and the potential significance of this material to prehistoric communities is explored.

No description available.